LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 
SANTA    CRUZ 


ADVENTURES  WHILE  PREACHING 
THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 


BY  NICHOLAS  VACHEL  LINDSAY 

GENERAL  WILLIAM  BOOTH 
ENTERS  INTO  HEAVEN 

ADVENTURES  WHILE   PREACHING 
THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 


ADVENTURES  WHILE  PREACHING 
THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 


NICHOLAS  VACHEL  LINDSAY 


NEW  YORK  /  MITCHELL  KENNERLEY  1914 


COPYRIGHT  1914   BY 
MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 


Printed  in  America 


DEDICATED  TO 
Miss  SARA  TEASDALE 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I.  I   START   ON    MY   WALK 

II.  WALKING    THROUGH    MISSOURI 

III.  WALKING    INTO    KANSAS 

iv.     IN  KANSAS:  THE  FIRST  HARVEST 

v.      IN  KANSAS:  THE  SECOND  AND  THIRD  HARVEST  127 

VI.      THE     END    OF    THE    ROAD}     MOONSHINE}     AND    SOME 


PROCLAMATIONS 


154 


Thanks  are  due  the  Crowell  Publishing 
Company  for  permission  to  reprint  the  proc- 
lamations from  Farm  and  Fireside  with 
which  the  book  ends. 


Adventures  While  Preach- 
ing the  Gospel  of  Beauty 


I  Start  on  My  Walk 

A  S  some  of  the  readers  of  this  account  are 
**  aware,  I  took  a  walk  last  summer  from 
my  home  town,  Springfield,  Illinois,  across 
Illinois,  Missouri,  and  Kansas,  up  and  down 
Colorado  and  into  New  Mexico.  One  of  the 
most  vivid  little  episodes  of  the  trip,  that 
came  after  two  months  of  walking1,  I  would 
like  to  tell  at  this  point.  It  was  in  southern 
Colorado.  It  was  early  morning.  Around 
the  cliff,  with  a  boom,  a  rattle  and  a  bang, 
appeared  a  gypsy  wagon.  On  the  front  seat 
was  a  Ilomany,  himself  dressed  inconspicu- 
ously, but  with  his  woman  more  bedecked 

9 


10     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

than  Carmen.  She  wore  the  bangles  and 
spangles  of  her  Hindu  progenitors.  The 
woman  began  to  shout  at  me,  I  could  not 
distinguish  just  what.  The  two  seemed  to 
think  this  was  the  gayest  morning  the  sun 
ever  shone  upon.  They  came  faster  and 
faster,  then,  suddenly,  at  the  woman's  sug- 
gestion, pulled  up  short.  And  she  asked  me 
with  a  fraternal,  confidential  air,  "What  you 
sellin',  what  you  sellin',  boy?" 

If  we  had  met  on  the  first  of  June,  when 
I  had  just  started,  she  would  have  pretended 
to  know  all  about  me,  she  would  have  asked 
to  tell  my  fortune.  On  the  first  of  June  I 
wore  about  the  same  costume  I  wear  on  the 
streets  of  Springfield.  I  was  white  as  paper 
from  two  years  of  writing  poetry  indoors. 
Now,  on  the  first  of  August  I  was  sun- 
burned a  quarter  of  an  inch  deep.  My  cos- 
tume, once  so  respectable,  I  had  gradually 
transformed  till  it  looked  like  that  of  a  show- 
man. I  wore  very  yellow  corduroys,  a  fancy 
sombrero  and  an  oriflamme  tie.  So  Mrs. 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       11 

Gypsy  hailed  me  as  a  brother.  She  eyed 
my  little  worn-out  oil-cloth  pack.  It  was  a 
delightful  professional  mystery  to  her. 

I  handed  up  a  sample  of  what  it  contained 
— my  Gospel  of  Beauty  (a  little  one-page 
formula  for  making  America  lovelier) ,  and 
my  little  booklet,  Rhymes  to  Be  Traded  for 
Bread. 

The  impatient  horses  went  charging  on. 
In  an  instant  came  more  noises.  Four  more 
happy  gypsy  wagons  passed.  Each  time 
the  interview  was  repeated  in  identical  lan- 
guage, and  with  the  same  stage  business. 
The  men  were  so  silent  and  masterful-look- 
ing, the  girls  such  brilliant,  inquisitive  cats! 
I  never  before  saw  anything  so  like  high- 
class  comic  opera  off  the  stage,  and  in  fancy 
I  still  see  it  all: — those  brown,  braceleted 
arms  still  wraving,  and  those  provocative 
siren  cries: — "What  you  sellin',  boy?  What 
you  sellin'?" 

I  hope  my  Gospel  did  them  good.  Its 
essential  principle  is  that  one  should  not  be 


12     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

a  gypsy  forever.  He  should  return  home. 
Having  returned,  he  should  plant  the  seeds 
of  Art  and  of  Beauty.  He  should  tend  them 
till  they  grow.  There  is  something  essen- 
tially humorous  about  a  man  walking  rapid- 
ly away  from  his  home  town  to  tell  all  men 
they  should  go  back  to  their  birthplaces.  It 
is  still  more  humorous  that,  when  I  finally 
did  return  home,  it  was  sooner  than  I  in- 
tended, all  through  a  temporary  loss  of 
nerve.  But  once  home  I  have  taken  my  own 
advice  to  heart.  I  have  addressed  four 
mothers'  clubs,  one  literary  club,  two  mis- 
sionary societies  and  one  High  School  De- 
bating Society  upon  the  Gospel  of  Beauty. 
And  the  end  is  not  yet.  No,  not  by  any 
means.  As  John  Paul  Jones  once  said,  "I 
have  not  yet  begun  to  fight." 

I  had  set  certain  rules  of  travel,  evolved 
and  proved  practicable  in  previous  expe- 
ditions in  the  East  and  South.  These  rules 
had  been  published  in  various  periodicals  be- 
fore my  start.  The  home  town  newspapers, 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       13 

my  puzzled  but  faithful  friends  in  good 
times  and  in  bad,  went  the  magazines  one 
better  and  added  a  rule  or  so.  To  promote 
the  gala  character  of  the  occasion,  a  certain 
paper  announced  that  I  was  to  walk  in  a 
Roman  toga  with  bare  feet  encased  in  san- 
dals. Another  added  that  I  had  travelled 
through  most  of  the  countries  of  Europe  in 
this  manner.  It  made  delightful  reading. 
Scores  of  mere  acquaintances  crossed  the 
street  to  shake  hands  with  me  on  the  strength 
of  it. 

The  actual  rules  were  to  have  nothing  to 
do  with  cities,  railroads,  money,  baggage  or 
fellow  tramps.  I  was  to  begin  to  ask  for 
dinner  about  a  quarter  of  eleven  and  for 
supper,  lodging  and  breakfast  about  a  quar- 
ter of  five.  I  was  to  be  neat,  truthful,  civil 
and  on  the  square.  I  was  to  preach  the  Gos- 
pel of  Beauty.  How  did  these  rules  work 
out? 

The  cities  were  easy  to  let  alone.  I 
passed  quickly  through  Hannibal  and  Jef- 


14     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

ferson  City.  Then,  straight  West,  it  was 
nothing  but  villages  and  farms  till  the  three 
main  cities  of  Colorado.  Then  nothing  but 
desert  to  central  New  Mexico.  I  did  not 
take  the  train  till  I  reached  central  New 
Mexico,  nor  did  I  write  to  Springfield  for 
money  till  I  quit  the  whole  game  at  that 
point. 

Such  wages  as  I  made  I  sent  home,  start- 
ing out  broke  again,  first  spending  just 
enough  for  one  day's  recuperation  out  of 
each  pile,  and,  in  the  first  case,  rehabilitating 
my  costume  considerably.  I  always  walked 
penniless.  My  baggage  was  practically  nil. 
It  was  mainly  printed  matter,  renewed  by 
mail.  Sometimes  I  carried  reproductions  of 
drawings  of  mine,  The  Village  Improve- 
ment Parade,  a  series  of  picture-cartoons 
with  many  morals. 

I  pinned  this  on  the  farmers'  walls,  ex- 
plaining the  mottoes  on  the  banners,  and  ex- 
horting them  to  study  it  at  their  leisure.  My 
little  pack  had  a  supply  of  the  aforesaid 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       15 

Rhymes  to  Be  Traded  for  Bread.     And  it 
contained  the  following  Gospel  of  Beauty: 

THE   GOSPEL   OF  BEAUTY 

Being  the  new  eecreed  of  a  beggar"  by 
that  vain  and  foolish  mendicant  Nicholas 
Fachel  Lindsay,  printed  for  his  personal 
friends  in  his  home  village — Springfield, 
Illinois.  It  is  his  intention  to  carry  this^gos- 
pel  across  the  country  beginning  June,  1912, 
returning  in  due  time. 


I  come  to  you  penniless  and  afoot,  to  bring 
a  message.  I  am  starting  a  new  religious 
idea.  The  idea  does  not  say  efno"  to  any 
creed  that  you  have  heard.  .  .  .  After 
this,  let  the  denomination  to  which  you  now 
belong  be  called  in  your  heart  (fihe  church 
of  beauty"  or  "the  church  of  the  open  sky" 
.  .  .  The  church  of  beauty  has  two  sides: 
the  love  of  beauty  and  the  love  of  God. 


16     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY, 

II 

THE  NEW  LOCALISM 

The  things  most  worth  while  are  ane's 
own  hearth  and  neighborhood.  We  should 
make  our  own  home  and  neighborhood  the 
most  democratic,  the  most  beautiful  and  the 
holiest  in  the  world.  The  children  now 
growing  up  should  become  devout  garden- 
ers or  architects  or  park  architects  or  teach- 
ers of  dancing  in  the  Greek  spirit  or  musi- 
cians or  novelists  or  poets  or  story-writers  or 
craftsmen  or  wood-carvers  or  dramatists  or 
actors  or  singers.  They  should  find  their 
talent  and  nurse  it  industriously.  They 
should  believe  in  every  possible  application 
to  art-theory  of  the  thoughts  of  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  and  Lincoln's  Gettys- 
burg Address.  They  should,  if  led  by  the 
spirit,  wander  over  the  whole  nation  in 
search  of  the  secret  of  democratic  beauty 
with  their  hearts  at  the  same  time  filled  to 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       17 

overflowing  with  the  righteousness  of  God. 
Then  they  should  come  back  to  their  own 
hearth  and  neighborhood  and  gather  a  little 
circle  of  their  own  sort  of  workers  about 
them  and  strive  to  make  the  neighborhood 
and  home  more  beautiful  and  democratic 
and  holy  with  their  special  art.  .  .  . 
They  should  labor  in  their  little  circle  expect- 
ing neither  reward  nor  honors.  .  .  .  In 
their  darkest  hours  they  should  be  made 
strong  by  the  vision  of  a  completely  beau- 
tiful neighborhood  and  the  passion  for  a 
completely  democratic  art.  Their  reason 
for  living  should  be  that  joy  in  beauty 
which  no  wounds  can  take  away,  and  that 
joy  in  the  love  of  God  which  no  crucifixion 
can  end. 

The  kindly  reader  at  this  point  clutches 
his  brow  and  asks,  "But  why  carry  this  paper 
around?  Why,  in  Heaven's  name,  do  it  as 
a  beggar?  Why  do  it  at  all?" 

Let  me  make  haste  to  say  that  there  has 


18     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

been  as  yet  no  accredited,  accepted  way  for 
establishing  Beauty  in  the  heart  of  the  aver- 
age American.  Until  such  a  way  has  been 
determined  upon  by  a  competent  committee, 
I  must  be  pardoned  for  taking  my  own 
course  and  trying  any  experiment  I  please. 

But  I  hope  to  justify  the  space  occupied 
by  this  narrative,  not  by  the  essential  seri- 
ousness of  my  intentions,  nor  the  essential 
solemnity  of  my  motley  cloak,  nor  by  the 
final  failure  or  success  of  the  trip,  but  by 
the  things  I  unexpectedly  ran  into,  as  curi- 
ous to  me  as  to  the  gentle  and  sheltered 
reader.  Of  all  that  I  saw  the  State  of  Kan- 
sas impressed  me  most,  and  the  letters  home 
I  have  chosen  cover,  for  the  most  part,  ad- 
ventures there. 

Kansas,  the  Ideal  American  Community! 
Kansas,  nearer  than  any  other  to  the  kind 
of  a  land  our  fathers  took  for  granted! 
Kansas,  practically  free  from  cities  and  in- 
dustrialism, the  real  last  refuge  of  the  con- 
stitution, since  it  maintains  the  type  of  agri- 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       19 

cultural  civilization  the  constitution  had  in 
mind!  Kansas,  State  of  tremendous  crops 
and  hardy,  devout,  natural  men!  Kansas 
of  the  historic  Santa  Fe  Trail  and  the  classic 
village  of  Emporia  and  the  immortal  editor 
of  Emporia!  Kansas,  laid  out  in  roads  a 
mile  apart,  criss-crossing  to  make  a  great 
checker-board,  roads  that  go  on  and  on  past 
endless  rich  farms  and  big  farm-houses, 
though  there  is  not  a  village  or  railroad  for 
miles !  Kansas,  the  land  of  the  real  country 
gentlemen,  Americans  who  work  the  soil  and 
own  the  soil  they  work;  State  where  the 
shabby  tenant-dwelling  scarce  appears  as 
yet  I  Kansas  of  the  Chautauqua  and  the  col- 
lege student  and  the  devout  school-teacher! 
The  dry  State,  the  automobile  State,  the  in- 
surgent State!  Kansas,  that  is  ruled  by  the 
cross-roads  church,  and  the  church  type  of 
civilization!  The  Newest  New  England! 
State  of  more  promise  of  permanent  spirit- 
ual glory  than  Massachusetts  in  her  brilliant 
youth ! 


20     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Travellers  who  go  through  in  cars  with 
roofs  know  little  of  this  State.  Kansas  is 
not  Kansas  till  we  march  day  after  day, 
away  from  the  sunrise,  under  the  blistering 
noon  sky,  on,  on  over  a  straight  west-going 
road  toward  the  sunset.  Then  we  begin  to 
have  our  spirits  stirred  by  the  sight  of  the 
tremendous  clouds  looming  over  the  most  in- 
terminable plain  that  ever  expanded  and 
made  glorious  the  heart  of  Man. 

I  have  walked  in  eastern  Kansas  where 
the  hedged  fields  and  the  orchards  and  gar- 
dens reminded  one  of  the  picturesque  sec- 
tions of  Indiana,  of  antique  and  settled 
Ohio.  Later  I  have  mounted  a  little  hill  on 
what  was  otherwise  a  level  and  seemingly  un- 
inhabited universe,  and  traced,  away  to  the 
left,  the  creeping  Arkansas,  its  course 
marked  by  the  cottonwoods,  that  became 
like  tufts  of  grass  on  its  far  borders.  All 
the  rest  of  the  world  was  treeless  and  river- 
less,  yet  green  from  the  rain  of  yesterday, 
and  patterned  like  a  carpet  with  the  shadows 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       21 

of  the  clouds.  I  have  walked  on  and  on 
across  this  unbroken  prairie-sod  where  half- 
wild  cattle  grazed.  Later  I  have  marched 
between  alfalfa  fields  where  hovered  the  lav- 
ender haze  of  the  fragrant  blossom,  and  have 
heard  the  busy  music  of  the  gorging  bumble 
bees.  Later  I  have  marched  for  days  and 
days  with  wheat  waving  round  me,  yellow 
as  the  sun.  Many's  the  night  I  have  slept  in 
the  barn-lofts  of  Kansas  with  the  wide  loft- 
door  rolled  open  and  the  inconsequential 
golden  moon  for  my  friend. 

These  selections  from  letters  home  tell 
how  I  came  into  Kansas  and  how  I  adven- 
tured there.  The  letters  were  written  avow- 
edly as  a  sort  of  diary  of  the  trip,  but  their 
contents  turned  out  to  be  something  less  than 
that,  something  more  than  that,  and  some- 
thing rather  different. 

THURSDAY,  MAY  30,  1912.  In  the  blue 
grass  by  the  side  of  the  road.  Somewhere 
west  of  Jacksonville,  Illinois.  Hot  sun. 


22     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Cool  wind.  Rabbits  in  the  distance.  Bum- 
blebees near. 

At  five  last  evening  I  sighted  my  lodging 
for  the  night.  It  was  the  other  side  of  a 
high  worm  fence.  It  was  down  in  the  hol- 
low of  a  grove.  It  was  the  box  of  an  old 
box-car,  brought  there  somehow,  without  its 
wheels.  It  was  far  from  a  railroad.  I  said 
in  my  heart  "Here  is  the  appointed  shelter." 
I  was  not  mistaken. 

As  was  subsequently  revealed,  it  belonged 
to  the  old  gentleman  I  spied  through  the 
window  stemming  gooseberries  and  singing: 
"John  Brown's  body."  He  puts  the  car  top 
on  wagon  wheels  and  hauls  it  from  grove  to 
grove  between  Jacksonville  and  the  east 
bank  of  the  Mississippi.  He  carries  a  saw 
mill  equipment  along.  He  is  clearing  this 
wood  for  the  owner,  of  all  but  its  walnut 
trees.  He  lives  in  the  box  with  his  son  and 
two  assistants.  He  is  cook,  washerwoman 
and  saw-mill  boss.  His  wife  died  many 
years  ago. 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       23 

The  old  gentleman  let  me  in  with  alac- 
rity. He  allowed  me  to  stem  gooseberries 
while  he  made  a  great  supper  for  the  boys. 
They  soon  came  in.  I  was  meanwhile  as- 
sured that  my  name  was  going  into  the  pot. 
My  host  looked  like  his  old  general,  McClel- 
lan.  He  was  eloquent  on  the  sins  of 
preachers,  dry  voters  and  pension  reformers. 
He  was  full  of  reminiscences  of  the  string 
band  at  Sherman's  headquarters,  in  which 
he  learned  to  perfect  himself  on  his  wonder- 
ful fiddle.  He  said,  "I  can't  play  slow  mu- 
sic. I've  got  to  play  dance  tunes  or  die." 
He  did  not  die.  His  son  took  a  banjo  from 
an  old  trunk  and  the  two  of  them  gave  us 
every  worth  while  tune  on  earth:  Money 
Musk,  Hell's  Broke  Loose  in  Georgia,  The 
Year  of  Jubilee,  Sailor's  Hornpipe,  Baby 
on  the  Block,  Lady  on  the  Lake,  and  The 
Irish  Washerwoman,  while  I  stemmed  goose- 
berries, which  they  protested  I  did  not  need 
to  do.  Then  I  read  my  own  unworthy 
verses  to  the  romantic  and  violin-stirred 


24     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

company.  And  there  was  room  for  all  of 
us  to  sleep  in  that  one  repentant  and  con- 
verted box-car. 

FRIDAY,  MAY  31,  1912.  Half  an  hour 
after  a  dinner  of  crackers,  cheese  and  raisins, 
provided  at  my  solicitation  by  the  grocer  in 
the  general  store  and  post-office,  Valley 
City,  Illinois. 

I  have  thought  of  a  new  way  of  stating 
my  economic  position.  I  belong  to  one  of 
the  leisure  classes,  that  of  the  rhymers.  In 
order  to  belong  to  any  leisure  class,  one  must 
be  a  thief  or  a  beggar.  On  the  whole  I  pre- 
fer to  be  a  beggar,  and,  before  each  meal, 
receive  from  toiling  man  new  permission  to 
extend  my  holiday.  The  great  business  of 
that  world  that  looms  above  the  workshop 
and  the  furrow  is  to  take  things  from  people 
by  some  sort  of  taxation  or  tariff  or  special 
privilege.  But  I  want  to  exercise  my  covet- 
ousness  only  in  a  retail  way,  open  and  above 
board,  and  when  I  take  bread  from  a  man's 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       25 

table  I  want  to  ask  him  for  that  particular 
piece  of  bread,  as  politely  as  I  can. 

But  this  does  not  absolutely  fit  my  life. 
For  yesterday  I  ate  several  things  without 
permission,  for  instance,  in  mid-morning  I 
devoured  all  the  cherries  a  man  can  hold. 
They  were  hanging  from  heavy,  breaking 
branches  that  came  way  over  the  stone  wall 
into  the  road. 

Another  adventure.  Early  in  the  after- 
noon I  found  a  brick  farmhouse.  It  had  a 
noble  porch.  There  were  marks  of  old- 
fashioned  distinction  in  the  trimmed  hedges 
and  flower-beds,  and  in  the  summer-houses. 
The  side-yard  and  barn-lot  were  the  cluck- 
ingest,  buzzingest  kind  of  places.  There  was 
not  a  human  being  in  sight.  I  knocked  and 
knocked  on  the  doors.  I  wandered  through 
all  the  sheds.  I  could  look  in  through  the 
unlocked  screens  and  see  every  sign  of  pres- 
ent occupation.  If  I  had  chosen  to  enter  I 
could  have  stolen  the  wash  bowl  or  the  baby- 
buggy  or  the  baby's  doll.  The  creamery 


26     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

was  more  tempting,  with  milk  and  butter 
and  eggs,  and  freshly  pulled  taffy  cut  in 
squares.  I  took  a  little  taffy.  That  is  all 
I  took,  though  the  chickens  were  very  so- 
cial and  I  could  have  eloped  with  several  of 
them.  The  roses  and  peonies  and  geraniums 
were  entrancing,  and  there  was  not  a  watch 
dog  anywhere.  Everything  seemed  to  say 
"Enter  in  and  possess!" 

I  saw  inside  the  last  door  where  I  knocked 
a  crisp,  sweet,  simple  dress  on  a  chair.  Ah, 
a  sleeping  beauty  somewhere  about ! 

I  went  away  from  that  place. 

SUNDAY,  JUNE  1,  1912.  By  the  side  of 
the  road,  somewhere  in  Illinois. 

Last  night  I  was  dead  tired.  I  hailed  a 
man  by  the  shed  of  a  stationary  engine.  I 
asked  him  if  I  could  sleep  in  the  engine- 
shed  all  night,  beginning  right  now.  He 
said  "Yes."  But  from  five  to  six,  he  put  me 
out  of  doors,  on  a  pile  of  gunny  sacks  on 
the  grass.  There  I  slept  while  the  ducks 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       27 

quacked  in  my  ears,  and  the  autos  whizzed 
over  the  bridge  three  feet  away.  My  host 
was  a  one-legged  man.  In  about  an  hour 
he  came  poking  me  with  that  crutch  and  that 
peg  of  his.  He  said  "Come,  and  let  me  tell 
your  fortune!  I  have  been  studying  your 
physiognifry  while  you  were  asleep  1"  So 
we  sat  on  a  log  by  the  edge  of  the  pond. 
He  said:  "I  am  the  Seventh  Son  of  a  Sev- 
enth Son.  They  call  me  the  duck-pond  di- 
viner. I  forecast  the  wreather  for  these 
parts.  Every  Sunday  I  have  my  corner  for 
the  week's  weather  in  the  paper  here."  Then 
he  indulged  in  a  good  deal  of  the  kind  of 
talk  one  finds  in  the  front  of  the  almanac. 
He  was  a  little  round  man  with  a  pair  of 
round,  dull  eyes,  and  a  dull,  round  face, 
with  a  two  weeks'  beard  upon  it.  He 
squinted  up  his  eyes  now.  He  was  deliber- 
ate. Switch  engines  were  going  by.  He 
paused  to  hail  the  engineers.  Here  is  a  part 
of  what  he  finally  said:  "You  are  a  Child 
of  Destiny."  He  hesitated,  for  he  wanted 


28     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

to  be  sure  of  the  next  point.  "You  were 
born  in  the  month  of  S-e-p-t-e-m-b-e-r. 
Your  preference  is  for  a  business  like  clerk- 
ing in  a  store.  You  are  of  a  slow,  pigmatic 
temperament,  but  I  can  see  you  are  fastidi- 
ous about  your  eating.  You  do  not  use  to- 
bacco. You  are  fond  of  sweets.  You  have 
been  married  twice.  Your  first  wife  died, 
and  your  second  was  divorced.  You  look 
like  you  would  make  a  good  spiritualist  me- 
dium. If  you  don't  let  any  black  cats  cross 
your  track  you  will  have  good  luck  for  the 
next  three  years." 

He  hit  it  right  twice.  I  am  a,  Child  of 
Destiny  and  I  am  fond  of  sweets.  When  a 
prophet  hits  it  right  on  essentials  like  that, 
who  would  be  critical? 

An  old  woman  with  a  pipe  in  her  mouth 
came  down  the  railroad  embankment  look- 
ing for  greens.  He  bawled  at  her  "Git  out 
of  that."  But  on  she  came.  When  she  was 
closer  he  said:  "Them  weeds  is  full  of 
poison  oak."  She  grunted,  and  kept  work- 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       29 

ing  her  way  toward  us,  and  with  a  belliger- 
ent swagger  marched  past  us  on  into  the 
engine-room,  carrying  a  great  mess  of! 
greens  in  her  muddy  hands. 

There  was  scarcely  space  in  that  little  shed 
for  the  engine,  and  it  was  sticking  out  in 
several  places.  Yet  it  dawned  on  me  that 
this  was  the  wife  of  my  host,  that  they  kept 
house  with  that  engine  for  the  principal  ar- 
ticle of  furniture.  Without  a  word  of  in- 
troduction or  explanation  she  stood  behind 
me  and  mumbled,  "You  need  your  supper, 
son.  Come  in." 

There  was  actually  a  side-room  in  that 
little  box,  a  side  room  with  a  cot  and  a  cup- 
board as  well.  On  the  floor  was  what  was 
once  a  rug.  But  it  had  had  a  long  kitchen 
history.  She  dipped  a  little  unwashed  bowl 
into  a  larger  unwashed  bowl,  with  an  un- 
washed thumb  doing  its  whole  duty.  She 
handed  me  a  fuzzy,  unwashed  spoon  and 
said  with  a  note  of  real  kindness,  "Eat  your 
supper,  young  man."  She  patted  me  on  the 


30     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

shoulder  with  a  sticky  hand.  Then  she  stood, 
looking  at  me  fixedly.  The  woman  had  only 
half  her  wits. 

I  suppose  they  kept  that  stew  till  it  was 
used  up,  and  then  made  another.  I  was  a 
Child  of  Destiny,  all  right,  and  Destiny  de- 
creed I  should  eat.  I  sat  there  trying  to 
think  of  things  to  say  to  make  agreeable  con- 
versation, and  postpone  the  inevitable. 
Finally  I  told  her  I  wanted  to  be  a  little  boy 
once  more,  and  take  my  bowl  and  eat  on  the 
log  by  the  pond  in  the  presence  of  Nature. 

She  maintained  that  genial  silence  which 
indicates  a  motherly  sympathy.  I  left  her 
smoking  and  smiling  there.  And  like  a  little 
child  that  knows  not  the  folly  of  waste,  I 
slyly  fed  my  supper  to  the  ducks. 

At  bedtime  the  old  gentleman  slept  in  his 
clothes  on  the  cot  in  the  kitchenette.  He 
had  the  dog  for  a  foot- warmer.  There  was 
a  jar  of  yeast  under  the  table.  Every  so 
often  the  old  gentleman  would  call  for  the 
old  lady  to  come  and  drive  the  ducks  out,  or 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       31 

they  would  get  the  board  off  the  jar.  Ever 
and  anon  the  ducks  had  a  taste  before  the 
avenger  arrived. 

On  one  side  of  the  engine  the  old  lady  had 
piled  gunny-sacks  for  my  bed.  That  soft- 
ened the  cement-floor  foundation.  Then  she 
insisted  on  adding  that  elegant  rug  from 
the  kitchen,  to  protect  me  from  the  fuzz  on 
the  sacks.  She  herself  slept  on  a  pile  of  ex- 
celsior with  a  bit  of  canvas  atop.  She  kept 
a  cat  just  by  her  cheek  to  keep  her  warm, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  the  pretty  brute  whis- 
pered things  in  her  ear.  Tabby  was  the  one 
aristocratic,  magical  touch: — one  of  these 
golden  coon-cats. 

The  old  lady's  bed  was  on  the  floor,  just 
around  the  corner  from  me,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  engine.  That  engine  stretched  its 
vast  bulk  between  us.  It  was  as  the  sword 
between  the  duke  and  the  queen  in  the  fairy- 
story.  But  every  so  often,  in  response  to 
the  old  gentleman's  alarm,  the  queen  would 
come  climbing  over  my  feet  in  order  to  get 


32     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

to  the  kitchen  and  drive  out  the  ducks. 
From  where  I  lay  I  could  see  through  two 
doors  to  the  night  outside.  I  could  watch 
the  stealthy  approach  of  the  white  and 
waddling  marauders.  Do  not  tell  me  a  duck 
has  no  sense  of  humor.  It  was  a  great  game 
of  tag  to  them.  It  occurred  as  regularly  as 
the  half  hours  were  reached.  I  could  time 
the  whole  process  by  the  ticking  in  my  soul, 
while  presumably  asleep.  And  while  wait- 
ing for  them  to  come  up  I  could  see  the  pond 
and  a  star  reflected  in  the  pond,  the  star  of 
my  Destiny,  no  doubt.  At  last  it  began  to 
rain.  Despite  considerations  of  fresh  air, 
the  door  was  shut,  and  soon  everybody  was 
asleep. 

The  bed  was  not  verminif  erous.  I  dislike 
all  jokes  on  such  a  theme,  but  in  this  case 
the  issue  must  be  met.  It  is  the  one  thing 
the  tramp  wants  to  know  about  his  bunk. 
That  peril  avoided,  there  is  nothing  to  quar- 
rel about.  Despite  all  the  grotesquerie  of 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       33 

that  night,  I  am  grateful  for  a  roof,  and 
two  gentle  friends. 

Poor  things!  Just  like  all  the  citizens  of 
the  twentieth  century,  petting  and  grooming 
machinery  three  times  as  smart  as  they  are 
themselves.  Such  people  should  have  en- 
gines to  take  care  of  them,  instead  of  taking 
care  of  engines.  There  stood  the  sleek  brute 
in  its  stall,  absorbing  all,  giving  nothing, 
pumping  supplies  only  for  its  own  caste; — 
water  to  be  fed  to  other  engines. 

But  seldom  are  keepers  of  engine-stables 
as  unfortunate  as  these.  The  best  they  can 
get  from  the  world  is  cruel  laughter.  Yet 
this  woman,  crippled  in  brain,  her  soul  only 
half  alive,  this  dull  man,  crippled  in  body, 
had  God's  gift  of  the  liberal  heart.  If  they 
are  supremely  absurd,  so  are  all  of  us.  We 
must  include  ourselves  in  the  farce.  These 
two,  tottering  through  the  dimness  and  vex- 
ation of  our  queer  world,  were  willing  the 
stranger  should  lean  upon  them.  I  say  they 
had  the  good  gift  of  the  liberal  heart.  One 


34     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

thing  was  theirs  to  divide.  That  was  a  roof. 
They  gave  me  my  third  and  they  helped  me 
to  hide  from  the  rain.  In  the  name  of  St. 
Francis  I  laid  me  down.  May  that  saint  of 
all  saints  be  with  them,  and  with  all  the 
gentle  and  innocent  and  weary  and  broken ! 


UPON  RETURNING  TO  THE  COUNTRY 
ROAD 

Even  the  shrewd  and  bitter, 
Gnarled  by  the  old  world's  greed. 
Cherished  the  stranger  softly 
Seeing  his  utter  need. 
Shelter  and  patient  hearing, 
These  were  their  gifts  to  him, 
To  the  minstrel  chanting,  begging, 
As  the  sunset-fire  grew  dim. 
The  rich  said  "You  are  welcome." 

Yea,  even  the  rich  were  good. 
How  strange  that  in  their  feasting 
His  songs  were  understood! 
The  doors  of  the  poor  were  open, 
The  poor  who  had  wandered  too, 
Who  had  slept  with  ne'er  a  roof-tree 


I  START  ON  MY  WALK       35 

Under  the  wind  and  dew. 
The  minds  of  the  poor  were  openf 
There  dark  mistrust  was  dead. 
They  loved  his  wizard  storiesf 
They  bought  his  rhymes  with  bread. 

Those  were  his  days  of  glory f 
Of  faith  in  his  fellow-men. 
Therefore,  to-day  the  singer 
Turns  beggar  once  again. 


II 

Walking  Through  Missouri 

TUESDAY  MORNING,  JUNE  4,  1912.  In  a 
hotel  bedroom  in  Laddonia,  Missouri.  I  oc- 
cupy this  room  without  charge. 

Through  the  mercy  of  the  gateman  I 
crossed  the  Hannibal  toll-bridge  without 
paying  fare,  and  the  more  enjoyed  the 
pearly  Mississippi  in  the  evening  twilight. 
Walking  south  of  Hannibal  next  morning, 
Sunday,  I  was  irresistibly  reminded  of  Ken- 
tucky. It  was  the  first  real  "pike"  of  my 
journey, — solid  gravel,  and  everyone  was 
exercising  his  racing  pony  in  his  racing  cart, 
and  giving  me  a  ride  down  lovely  avenues 
of  trees.  Here,  as  in  dozens  of  other  inter- 
esting "lifts"  in  Illinois,  I  had  the  driver's 
complete  attention,  recited  The  Gospel  of 

36 


THROUGH    MISSOURI         37 

Beauty  through  a  series  of  my  more  didactic 
rhymes  till  I  was  tired,  and  presented  the 
Village  Improvement  Parade  and  the 
Rhymes  to  Be  Traded  for  Bread  and  ex- 
horted the  comradely  driver  to  forget  me 
never.  One  colored  horseman  hitched  for- 
ward on  the  plank  of  his  breaking-cart  and 
gave  me  his  seat.  Then  came  quite  a  ride 
into  New  London.  He  asked,  "So  you  goin' 
to  walk  west  to  the  mountains  and  all 
around?"  "Yes,  if  this  colt  don't  break  my 
neck,  or  I  don't  lose  my  nerve  or  get  bitten 
by  a  dog  or  anything."  "Will  you  walk 
back?"  "Maybe  so,  maybe  not."  He  pon- 
dered a  while,  then  said,  with  the  Bert  Wil- 
liams manner,  " You  II  ride  back.  Mark  my 
words,  youll  ride  back!" 

He  asked  a  little  later,  "Goin'  to  harves* 
in  Kansas?"  I  assured  him  I  was  not  going 
to  harvest  in  Kansas.  He  rolled  his  big  white 
eyes  at  me:  "What  in  the  name  of  Uncle 
Hillbilly  air  you  up  to  then?" 

In  this  case  I  could  not  present  my  tracts, 


38     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

for  I  was  holding  on  to  him  for  dear  life. 
Just  then  he  turned  off  my  road.  Getting 
out  of  the  cart  I  nearly  hung  myself;  and 
the  colt  was  away  again  before  I  could  say 
"Thank  you." 

Yesterday  I  passed  through  what  was 
mostly  a  flat  prairie  country,  abounding  in 
the  Missouri  mule.  I  met  one  man  on  horse- 
back driving  before  him  an  enormous  speci- 
men tied  head  to  head  with  a  draught-horse. 
The  mule  was  continually  dragging  his  good- 
natured  comrade  into  the  ditch  and  being 
jerked  out  again.  The  mule  is  a  perpetual 
inquisitor  and  experimenter.  He  followed 
me  along  the  fence  with  the  alertest  curios- 
ity, when  he  was  inside  the  field,  yet  meeting 
me  in  the  road,  he  often  showed  deadly  ter- 
ror. If  he  was  a  mule  colt,  following  his 
mare  mamma  along  the  pike,  I  had  to  stand 
in  the  side  lane  or  hide  behind  a  tree  till  he 
went  by,  or  else  he  would  turn  and  run  as 
if  the  very  devil  were  after  him.  Then  the 
farmer  on  the  mare  would  have  to  pursue 


THROUGH    MISSOURI         39 

him  a  considerable  distance,  and  drive  him 
back  with  cuss  words.  Tis  sweet  to  stir  up 
so  much  emotion,  even  in  the  breast  of  an 
animal. 

What  do  you  suppose  happened  in  New 
London?  I  approached  what  I  thought  a 
tiny  Baptist  chapel  of  whitewashed  stone. 
Noting  it  was  about  sermon-time,  and  feel- 
ing like  repenting,  I  walked  in.  Behold,  the 
most  harmoniously-colored  Catholic  shrine 
in  the  world!  The  sermon  was  being 
preached  by  the  most  gorgeously  robed 
priest  one  could  well  conceive.  The  father 
went  on  to  show  how  a  vision  of  the  Christ- 
child  had  appeared  on  the  altar  of  a  lax 
congregation  in  Spain.  From  that  time 
those  people,  stricken  with  reverence  and 
godly  fear,  put  that  church  into  repair,  and 
the  community  became  a  true  servant  of  the 
Lord.  Infidels  were  converted,  heretics 
were  confounded. 

After  the  sermon  came  the  climax  of  the 
mass,  and  from  the  choir  loft  above  my  head 


40     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

came  the  most  passionate  religious  singing 
I  ever  heard  in  my  life.  The  excellence  of 
the  whole  worship,  even  to  the  preaching  of 
visions,  was  a  beautiful  surprise. 

People  do  not  open  their  eyes  enough, 
neither  their  spiritual  nor  their  physical  eyes. 
They  are  not  sensitive  enough  to  loveliness 
either  visible  or  by  the  pathway  of  visions. 
I  wish  every  church  in  the  world  could  see 
the  Christ-child  on  the  altar,  every  Metho- 
dist and  Baptist  as  well  as  every  Catholic 
congregation. 

With  these  thoughts  I  sat  and  listened 
while  that  woman  soloist  sang  not  only 
through  the  Mass,  but  the  Benediction  of 
the  Blessed  Sacrament  as  well.  The  whole 
surprise  stands  out  like  a  blazing  star  in  my 
memory. 

I  say  we  do  not  see  enough  visions.  I 
wish  that,  going  out  of  the  church  door  at 
noon,  every  worshipper  in  America  could 
spiritually  discern  the  Good  St.  Francis 
come  down  to  our  earth  and  singing  of  the 


THROUGH    MISSOURI         41 

Sun.  I  wish  that  saint  would  return.  I 
wish  he  would  preach  voluntary  poverty  to 
all  the  middle-class  and  wealthy  folk  of  this 
land,  with  the  power  that  once  shook  Eu- 
rope. 

FRIDAY,  JUNE  7,  1912.  In  the  mid-after- 
noon in  the  woods,  many  miles  west  of  Jef- 
ferson City.  I  am  sitting  by  a  wild  rose 
bush.  I  am  looking  down  a  long  sunlit  vista 
of  trees. 

Wednesday  evening,  three  miles  from 
Fulton,  Missouri,  I  encountered  a  terrific 
storm.  I  tried  one  farm-house  just  before 
the  rain  came  down,  but  they  would  not  let 
me  in,  not  even  into  the  barn.  They  said  it 
was  "not  convenient."  They  said  there  was 
another  place  a  little  piece  ahead,  anyway. 
Pretty  soon  I  was  considerably  rained  upon. 
But  the  "other  place"  did  not  appear.  Later 
the  thunder  and  lightning  were  frightful. 
It  seemed  to  me  everything  was  being  struck 
all  around  me:  because  of  the  sheer  down- 


42     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

pour  it  became  pitch  dark.  It  seemed  as 
though  the  very  weight  of  the  rain  would 
beat  me  into  the  ground.  Yet  I  felt  that  I 
needed  the  washing.  The  night  before  I 
enjoyed  the  kind  of  hospitality  that  makes 
one  yearn  for  a  bath. 

At  last  I  saw  a  light  ahead.  I  walked 
through  more  cataracts  and  reached  it. 
Then  I  knocked  at  the  door.  I  entered  what 
revealed  itself  to  be  a  negro  cabin.  Mine 
host  was  Uncle  Remus  himself,  only  a  per- 
son of  more  delicacy  and  dignity.  He  ap- 
peared to  be  well  preserved,  though  he  was 
eighteen  years  old  when  the  war  broke  out. 
He  owns  forty  acres  and  more  than  one 
mule.  His  house  was  sweet  and  clean,  all 
metal  surfaces  polished,  all  wood-work 
scrubbed  white,  all  linen  fresh  laundered. 
He  urged  me  to  dry  at  his  oven.  It  was  a 
long  process,  taking  much  fuel.  He  al- 
lowed me  to  eat  supper  and  breakfast  with 
him  and  his  family,  which  honor  I  scarcely 
deserved.  The  old  man  said  grace  standing 


THROUGH   MISSOURI         43 

up.  Then  we  sat  down  and  he  said  another. 
The  first  was  just  family  prayers.  The  sec- 
ond was  thanksgiving  for  the  meal.  The 
table  was  so  richly  and  delicately  provided 
that  within  my  heart  I  paraphrased  the 
twenty-third  Psalm,  though  I  did  not  quote 
it  out  aloud:  "Thou  preparest  a  table  before 
me  in  the  presence  of  mine  enemies" — 
(namely,  the  thunder  and  lightning,  and  the 
inhospitable  white  man!) . 

I  hope  to  be  rained  on  again  if  it  brings 
me  communion  bread  like  that  I  ate  with 
my  black  host.  The  conversation  was  about 
many  things,  but  began  religiously;  how 
ffOr  Master  in  the  sky  gave  us  everything 
here  to  take  keer  of,  and  said  we  mussent 
waste  any  of  it"  The  wife  was  a  mixture  of 
charming  diffidence  and  eagerness  in  offer- 
ing her  opinion  on  these  points  of  political 
economy  and  theology. 

After  supper  the  old  gentleman  told  me 
a  sweet-singing  field-bird  I  described  was 
called  the  "Rachel- Jane."  He  had  five  chil- 


44     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

dren  grown  and  away  from  home  and  one 
sleek  first  voter  still  under  his  roof.  The 
old  gentleman  asked  the  inevitable  question: 
"Coin'  west  harvesting" 

I  said  "No"  again.  Then  I  spread  out 
and  explained  The  Village  Improvement 
Parade.  This  did  not  interest  the  family 
much,  but  they  would  never  have  done  with 
asking  me  questions  about  Lincoln.  And 
the  fact  that  I  came  from  Lincoln's  home 
town  was  plainly  my  chief  distinction  in  their 
eyes.  The  best  bed  was  provided  for  me, 
and  warm  water  in  which  to  bathe,  and  I 
slept  the  sleep  of  the  clean  and  regenerated 
in  snowy  linen.  Next  morning  the  sun 
shone,  and  I  walked  the  muddy  roads  as 
cheerfully  as  though  they  were  the  paths  of 
Heaven. 

SUNDAY  MORNING,  JUNE  9,  1912.  I  am 
writing  in  the  railroad  station  at  Tipton, 
Missouri. 

A  little  while  back  a  few  people  began 


THROUGH    MISSOURI        45 

to  ask  me  to  work  for  my  meals.  I  believe 
this  is  because  the  "genteel"  appearance 
with  which  I  started  has  become  something 
else.  My  derby  hat  has  been  used  for  so 
many  things, — to  keep  off  a  Noah's  flood  of 
rain,  to  catch  cherries  in,  to  fight  bumble- 
bees, to  cover  my  face  while  asleep,  and  keep 
away  the  vague  terrors  of  the  night, — that 
it  is  still  a  hat,  but  not  quite  in  the  mode. 
My  face  is  baked  by  the  sun  and  my  hands 
are  fried  and  stewed.  My  trousers  are 
creased  not  in  one  place,  but  all  over.  These 
things  made  me  look  more  like  a  person  who, 
in  the  words  of  the  conventional  world, 
"ought  to  work/' 

Having  been  requested  to  work  once  or 
twice,  I  immediately  made  it  my  custom  to 
offer  labor-power  as  a  preliminary  to  the 
meal.  I  generally  ask  about  five  people  be- 
fore I  find  the  one  who  happens  to  be  in  a 
meal-giving  mood.  This  kindly  person, 
about  two-thirds  of  the  time,  refuses  to  let 
me  work.  I  insist  and  insist,  but  he  says, 


46     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

"Aw,  come  in  and  eat  anyway."  The  man 
who  accepts  my  offer  of  work  may  let  me 
cut  weeds,  or  hoe  corn  or  potatoes,  but  he 
generally  shows  me  the  woodpile  and  the 
axe.  Even  then  every  thud  of  that  inevi- 
tably dull  instrument  seems  to  go  through 
him.  After  five  minutes  he  thinks  I  have 
worked  an  hour,  and  he  comes  to  the  porch 
and  shouts:  "Come  in  and  get  your  din- 


ner." 


Assuming  a  meal  is  worth  thirty-five 
cents,  I  have  never  yet  worked  out  the  worth 
of  one,  at  day-laborer's  wages.  Very  often 
I  am  called  into  the  house  three  times  before 
I  come.  Whether  I  work  or  not,  the  meals 
are  big  and  good.  Perhaps  there  is  a  little 
closer  attention  to  The  Gospel  of  Beauty, 
after  three  unheeded  calls  to  dinner. 

After  the  kindling  is  split  and  the  meal 
eaten  and  they  lean  back  in  their  chairs, 
a-weary  of  their  mirth,  by  one  means  or  an- 
other I  show  them  how  I  am  knocking  at 


THROUGH   MISSOURI        47 

the  door  of  the  world  with  a  dream  in  my 
hand. 

Because  of  the  multitudes  of  tramps  pour- 
ing west  on  the  freight  trains, — tramps  I 
never  see  because  I  let  freight  cars  alone, — 
night  accommodations  are  not  so  easy  to  get 
as  they  were  in  my  other  walks  in  Pennsyl- 
vania and  Georgia.  I  have  not  yet  been 
forced  to  sleep  under  the  stars,  but  each 
evening  has  been  a  scramble.  There  must 
be  some  better  solution  to  this  problem  of  a 
sleeping-place. 

The  country  hotel,  if  there  is  one  around, 
is  sometimes  willing  to  take  in  the  man  who 
flatly  says  he  is  broke.  For  instance,  the 
inn-keeper's  wife  at  Clarksburg  was  ten- 
derly pitiful,  yea,  she  was  kind  to  me  after 
the  fashion  of  the  holiest  of  the  angels. 
There  was  a  protracted  meeting  going  on 
in  the  town.  That  was,  perhaps,  the  reason 
for  her  exalted  heart.  But,  whatever  the 
reason,  in  this  one  case  I  was  welcomed  with 
such  kindness  and  awe  that  I  dared  not  lift 


48     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

up  my  haughty  head  or  distribute  my  poems, 
or  give  tongue  to  my  views,  or  let  her  sus- 
pect for  a  moment  I  was  a  special  IDEA  on 
legs.  It  was  much  lovelier  to  have  her  think 
I  was  utterly  forlorn. 

This  morning  when  I  said  good-bye  I 
fumbled  my  hat,  mumbled  my  words  and 
shuffled  my  feet,  and  may  the  Good  St. 
Francis  reward  her. 

When  I  asked  the  way  to  Tipton  the 
farmer  wanted  me  to  walk  the  railroad. 
People  cannot  see  "why  the  Sam  Hill"  any- 
one wants  to  walk  the  highway  when  the 
rails  make  a  bee-line  for  the  destination. 
This  fellow  was  so  anxious  for  the  preser- 
vation of  my  feet  he  insisted  it  looked  like 
rain.  I  finally  agreed  that,  for  the  sake  of 
avoiding  a  wetting,  I  had  best  hurry  to  Tip- 
ton  by  the  ties.  The  six  miles  of  railroad 
between  Clarksburg  and  Tipton  should  be 
visited  by  every  botanist  in  the  United 
States.  Skip  the  rest  of  this  letter  unless 
you  are  interested  in  a  catalogue  of  flowers. 


THROUGH    MISSOURI         49 

First  comes  the  reed  with  the  deep  blue 
blossoms  at  the  top  that  has  bloomed  by  my 
path  all  the  way  from  Springfield,  Illinois. 
Then  come  enormous  wild  roses,  showing 
every  hue  that  friend  of  man  ever  displayed. 
Behold  an  army  of  white  poppies  join  our 
march,  then  healthy  legions  of  waving  mus- 
tard. Our  next  recruits  are  tiny  golden- 
hearted  ragged  kinsmen  of  the  sunflower. 
No  comrades  depart  from  this  triumphal 
march  to  Tipton.  Once  having  joined  us, 
they  continue  in  our  company.  The  mass 
of  color  grows  deeper  and  more  subtle  each 
moment.  Behold,  regiments  of  pale  laven- 
der larkspur.  'Tis  an  excellent  garden,  the 
finer  that  it  needs  no  tending.  Though  the 
rain  has  failed  to  come,  I  begin  to  be  glad  I 
am  hobbling  along  over  the  vexatious  ties. 
I  forget  my  resolve  to  run  for  President. 

Once  I  determined  to  be  a  candidate.  I 
knew  I  would  get  the  tramp-vote  and  the 
actor-vote.  My  platform  was  to  be  that 


50     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

railroad  ties  should  be  just  close  enough  for 
men  to  walk  on  them  in  natural  steps,  neither 
mincing  the  stride  nor  widely  stretching  the 
legs. 

Not  yet  have  we  reached  Tipton.  Behold 
a  white  flower,  worthy  of  a  better  name,  that 
the  farmers  call  "sheep's  tea."  Behold 
purple  larkspur  joining  the  lavender  lark- 
spur. Behold  that  disreputable  camp-fol- 
lower the  button-weed,  wearing  its  shabby 
finery.  Now  a  red  delicate  grass  joins  in, 
and  a  big  purple  and  pink  sort  of  an  aster. 
Behold  a  pink  and  white  sheep's  tea.  And 
look,  there  is  a  dwarf  morning  glory,  the 
sweetest  in  the  world.  Here  is  a  group  of 
black-eyed  Susans,  marching  like  suffra- 
gettes to  get  the  vote  at  Tipton.  Here  is  a 
war-dance  of  Indian  Paint.  And  here  are 
bluebells. 

"Coin'  west  harvesting" 

"I  have  harvested  already,  ten  thousand 
flowers  an  hour." 


THROUGH   MISSOURI         51 

JUNE  10, 1912.  3  p.  m.  Three  miles  west 
of  Sedalia,  Missouri.  In  the  woods.  Near 
the  automobile  road  to  Kansas  City. 

Now  that  I  have  passed  Sedalia  I  am 
pretty  well  on  toward  the  Kansas  line. 
Only  three  more  days'  journey,  and  then  I 
shall  be  in  Kansas,  State  of  Romance,  State 
of  Expectation.  Goodness  knows  Missouri 
has  plenty  of  incident,  plenty  of  merit.  But 
it  is  a  cross  between  Illinois  and  northern 
Kentucky,  and  to  beg  here  is  like  begging 
in  my  own  back-yard. 

But  the  heart  of  Kansas  is  the  heart  of 

the  West Inclosed  find  a  feather 

from  the  wing  of  a  young  chicken-hawk. 
He  happened  across  the  road  day  before 
yesterday.  The  farmer  stopped  the  team 
and  killed  him  with  his  pitchfork.  That 
farmer  seemed  to  think  he  had  done  the  Lord 
a  service  in  ridding  the  world  of  a  parasite. 
Yet  I  had  a  certain  fellow-feeling  for  the 
hawk,  as  I  have  for  anybody  who  likes 
chicken. 


52     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

This  walk  is  full  of  suggestions  for 
poems.  Sometimes,  in  a  confidential  mo- 
ment, I  tell  my  hosts  I  am  going  to  write  a 
chronicle  of  the  whole  trip  in  verse.  But  I 
cannot  write  it  now.  The  traveller  at  my 
stage  is  in  a  kind  of  farm-hand  condition  of 
mind  and  blood.  He  feels  himself  so  much 
a  part  of  the  soil  and  the  sun  and  the 
ploughed  acres,  he  eats  so  hard  and  sleeps 
so  hard,  he  has  little  more  patience  in  trying 
to  write  than  the  husbandman  himself. 

If  that  poem  is  ever  written  I  shall  say, — 
to  my  fellow-citizens  of  Springfield,  for  in- 
stance:— "I  have  gone  as  your  delegate  to 
greet  the  fields,  to  claim  them  for  you 
against  a  better  day.  I  lay  hold  on  these 
furrows  on  behalf  of  all  those  cooped  up  in 
cities." 

I  feel  that  in  a  certain  mystical  sense  I 
have  made  myself  part  of  the  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  farms  that  lie  between  me  and 
machine-made  America.  I  have  scarcely 
seen  anything  but  crops  since  I  left  home. 


THROUGH    MISSOURI         53 

The  whole  human  race  is  grubbing  in  the 
soil,  and  the  soil  is  responding  with  tremen- 
dous vigor.  By  walking  I  get  as  tired  as 
any  and  imagine  I  work  too.  Sometimes 
the  glory  goes.  Then  I  feel  my  own  idle- 
ness above  all  other  facts  on  earth.  I  want 
to  get  to  work  immediately.  But  I  suppose 
I  am  a  minstrel  or  nothing.  (There  goes  a 
squirrel  through  the  treetops. ) 

Every  time  I  say  "No"  to  the  question 
"Goin'  west  harvestin5?"  I  am  a  little  less 
brisk  about  reciting  that  triad  of  poems  that 
I  find  is  the  best  brief  exposition  of  my 
gospel:  (1)  The  Proud  Farmer,  (2)  The 
Illinois  Village  and  (3)  The  Building  of 
Springfield. 

If  I  do  harvest  it  is  likely  to  be  just  as  it 
was  at  the  Springfield  water- works  a  year 
ago,  when  I  broke  my  back  in  a  week  trying 
to  wheel  bricks. 

JUNE  12, 1912.  On  the  banks  of  a  stream 
west  of  the  town  of  Warrensburg,  Missouri. 


54     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Perhaps  the  problem  of  a  night's  lodging 
has  been  solved.  I  seem  to  have  found  a 
substitute  for  the  spare  bedrooms  and  white 
sheets  of  Georgia  and  Pennsylvania.  It  ap- 
pears that  no  livery  stable  will  refuse  a  man 
a  place  to  sleep.  What  happened  at  Otter- 
ville  and  Warrensburg  I  can  make  happen 
from  here  on,  or  so  I  am  assured  by  a  farm- 
hand. He  told  me  that  every  tiniest  village 
from  here  to  western  Kansas  has  at  least 
two  livery-stables  and  there  a  man  may  sleep 
for  the  asking.  He  should  try  to  get  per- 
mission to  mount  to  the  hay-mow,  for,  un- 
less the  cot  in  the  office  is  a  mere  stretch  of 
canvas,  it  is  likely  to  be  (excuse  me)  vermi- 
niferous.  The  stable  man  asks  if  the  men- 
dicant has  matches  or  tobacco.  If  he  has 
he  must  give  them  up.  Also  he  is  told  not 
to  poke  his  head  far  out  of  the  loft  window, 
for,  if  the  insurance  man  caught  him,  it 
would  be  all  up  with  the  insurance.  These 
preliminaries  quickly  settled,  the  transient 
requests  a  buggy-robe  to  sleep  in,  lest  he  be 


THROUGH    MISSOURI         55 

overwhelmed  with  the  loan  of  a  horse- 
blanket.  The  objection  to  a  horse-blanket 
is  that  it  is  a  horse-blanket. 

And  so,  if  I  am  to  believe  my  friend  with 
the  red  neck,  my  good  times  at  Warrens- 
burg  and  Otterville  are  likely  to  continue. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  sleeping  in  a  hay- 
loft is  Romance  itself.  The  alfalfa  is  soft 
and  fragrant  and  clean,  the  wind  blows 
through  the  big  loft  door,  the  stars  shine 
through  the  cottonwoods.  If  I  wake  in  the 
night  I  hear  the  stable-boys  bringing  in  the 
teams  of  men  who  have  driven  a  long  way 
and  back  again  to  get  something; — to  get 
drunk,  or  steal  the  kisses  of  somebody's  wife 
or  put  over  a  political  deal  or  get  a  chance 
to  preach  a  sermon; — and  I  get  scraps  of 
detail  from  the  stable-boys  after  the  main 
actors  of  the  drama  have  gone.  It  sounds 
as  though  all  the  remarks  were  being  made 
in  the  loft  instead  of  on  the  ground  floor. 
The  horses  stamp  and  stamp  and  the  grind- 
ing sound  of  their  teeth  is  so  close  to  me  I 


56     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

cannot  believe  at  first  that  the  mangers  and 
feed-boxes  are  way  down  below. 

It  is  morning  before  I  know  it  and  the 
gorged  birds  are  singing  "shivaree,  shiva- 
ree,  Rachel  Jane,  Rachel  Jane"  in  the  mul- 
berry trees,  just  outside  the  loft  window. 
After  a  short  walk  I  negotiate  for  break- 
fast, then  walk  on  through  Paradise  and  at 
the  proper  time  negotiate  for  dinner,  walk 
on  through  Paradise  again  and  at  six  nego- 
tiate for  the  paradisical  haymow,  without 
looking  for  supper,  and  again  more  sleepy 
than  hungry.  The  difference  between  this 
system  and  the  old  one  is  that  about  half 
past  four  I  used  to  begin  to  worry  about 
supper  and  night  accommodations,  and  gen- 
erally worried  till  seven.  Now  life  is  one 
long  sweet  stroll,  and  I  watch  the  sunset 
from  my  bed  in  the  alfalfa  with  the  delights 
of  the  whole  day  renewed  in  my  heart. 

Passing  through  the  village  of  Sedalia  I 
inquired  the  way  out  of  town  to  the  main 
road  west.  My  informant  was  a  man  named 


THROUGH   MISSOURI        57 

McSweeny,  drunk  enough  to  be  awfully 
friendly.  He  asked  all  sorts  of  questions. 
He  induced  me  to  step  two  blocks  out  of 
my  main  course  down  a  side-street  to  his 
"Restaurant."  He  said  he  was  not  going  to 
let  me  leave  town  without  a  square  meal.  It 
was  a  strange  eating-place,  full  of  ditch- 
diggers,  teamsters,  red-necked  politicians 
and  slender  intellectual  politicians.  In  the 
background  was  a  scattering  of  the  furtive 
daughters  of  pleasure,  some  white,  some 
black.  The  whole  institution  was  but  an 
annex  to  the  bar  room  in  front.  Mr.  Mc- 
Sweeny looked  over  my  book  while  I  ate. 
After  the  meal  he  gathered  a  group  of  the 
politicians  and  commanded  me  to  recite.  I 
gave  them  my  rhyme  in  memory  of  Altgeld 
and  my  rhyme  in  denunciation  of  Lorimer, 
and  my  rhyme  denouncing  all  who  cooper- 
ated in  the  white  slave  trade,  including  sell- 
ers of  drink.  Mr.  McSweeny  said  I  was  the 
goods,  and  offered  to  pass  the  hat,  but  I 
would  not  permit.  A  handsome  black  jeze- 


58     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

bel  sat  as  near  us  as  she  dared  and  listened 
quite  seriously.  I  am  sure  she  would  have 
put  something  in  that  hat  if  it  had  gone 
round. 

"I  suppose,"  said  Mr.  McSweeny,  as  he 
stood  at  his  door  to  bow  adieu,  "y°u  will 
harvest  when  you  get  a  little  further  west?" 

That  afternoon  I  walked  miles  and  miles 
through  rough  country,  and  put  up  with  a 
friendly  farmer  named  John  Humphrey. 
He  had  children  like  little  golden  doves,  and 
a  most  hard-working  wife.  The  man  had 
harvested  and  travelled  eight  years  in  the 
west  before  he  had  settled  down.  He  told 
me  all  about  it.  Until  late  that  night  he  told 
me  endless  fascinating  stories  upon  the 
theme  of  that  free  man's  land  ahead  of  me. 
If  he  had  not  had  those  rosy  babies  to  an- 
chor him,  he  would  have  picked  up  and  gone 
along,  and  argued  down  my  rule  to  travel 
alone. 

Because  he  had  been  a  man  of  the  road 
there  was  a  peculiar  feeling  of  understand- 


THROUGH    MISSOURI         59 

ing  in  the  air.  They  were  people  of  much 
natural  refinement.  I  was  the  more  grate- 
ful for  their  bread  when  I  considered  that 
when  I  came  upon  them  at  sunset  they  were 
working  together  in  the  field.  There  was 
not  a  hand  to  help.  How  could  they  be  so 
happy  and  seem  so  blest?  Their  day  was 
nearer  sixteen  than  eight  hours  long.  I  felt 
deathly  ashamed  to  eat  their  bread.  I  told 
them  so,  with  emphasis.  But  the  mother 
said,  "We  always  takes  in  them  that  asks, 
and  nobody  never  done  us  no  harm  yet." 

That  night  was  a  turning  point  with  me. 
In  reply  to  a  certain  question  I  said:  "Yes. 
I  am  'going  west  harvesting" 

I  asked  the  veteran  traveller  to  tell  me  the 
best  place  to  harvest.  He  was  sitting  on 
the  floor  pulling  the  children's  toes,  and  hav- 
ing a  grand  time.  He  drew  himself  up  into 
a  sort  of  oracular  knot,  with  his  chin  on  his 
knees,  and  gesticulated  with  his  pipe. 

"Go  straight  west,"  he  said,  "to  Great 
Bend,  Barton  County,  Kansas,  the  banner 


60     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

wheat  county  of  the  United  States.  Arrive 
about  July  fifth.  Walk  to  the  public  square. 
Walk  two  miles  north.  Look  around.  You 
will  see  nothing  but  wheat  fields,  and  farm- 
ers standing  on  the  edge  of  the  road  crying 
into  big  red  handkerchiefs.  Ask  the  first 
man  for  work.  He  will  stop  crying  and 
give  it  to  you.  Wages  will  be  two  dollars 
and  a  half  a  day,  and  keep.  You  will  have 
all  you  want  to  eat  and  a  clean  blanket  in 
the  hay." 

I  have  resolved  to  harvest  at  Great  Bend. 

HEART  OF  GOD 

A   PRAYER    IN    THE   JUNGLES   OF    HEAVEN 

0  great  Heart  of  God, 

Once  vague  and  lost  to  me, 

Why  do  I  throb  with  your  throb  to-night, 

In  this  land,  Eternity? 

0  little  Heart  of  God, 

Sweet  intruding  stranger. 

You  are  laughing  in  my  human  breast, 

A  Christ-child  in  a  manger. 

Heart,  dear  Heart  of  God, 


THROUGH   MISSOURI        61 

Beside  you  now  I  Jcneel, 

Strong  Heart  of  Faith.    0  Heart  not  mine. 

Where  God  has  set  His  seal. 

Wild  thundering  Heart  of  God 

Out  of  my  doubt  I  come, 

And  my  foolish  feet  with  prophets'  feet, 

March  with  the  prophets'  drum. 


Ill 

Walking  into  Kansas 

TT  has  been  raining  quite  a  little.  The 
roads  are  so  muddy  I  have  to  walk  the 
ties.  Keeping  company  with  the  railroad  is 
almost  a  habit.  While  this  shower  passes  I 
write  in  the  station  at  Stillwell,  Kansas. 

JUNE  14,  1912.  I  have  crossed  the  mys- 
tic border.  I  have  left  Earth.  I  have  en- 
tered Wonderland.  Though  I  am  still  east 
of  the  geographical  centre  of  the  United 
States,  in  every  spiritual  sense  I  am  in  the 
West.  This  morning  I  passed  the  stone 
mile-post  that  marks  the  beginning  of 
Kansas. 

I  went  over  the  border  and  encountered 
— what  dc  you  think?  Wild  strawberries! 
Lo,  where  the  farmer  had  cut  the  weeds 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     63 

between  the  road  and  the  fence,  the  gentle 
fruits  revealed  themselves,  growing  in  the 
shadow  down  between  the  still-standing 
weeds.  They  shine  out  in  a  red  line  that 
stretches  on  and  on,  and  a  man  has  to  re- 
solve to  stop  eating  several  times.  Just  as 
he  thinks  he  has  conquered  desire  the  line 
gets  dazzlingly  red  again. 

The  berries  grow  at  the  end  of  a  slender 
stalk,  clustered  six  in  a  bunch.  One  gathers 
them  by  the  stems,  in  bouquets,  as  it  were, 
and  eats  off  the  fruit  like  taffy  off  a  stick. 

I  was  gathering  buckets  of  cherries  for  a 
farmer's  wife  yesterday.  This  morning  after 
the  strawberries  had  mitigated  I  encoun- 
tered a  bush  of  raspberries,  and  then  hedges 
on  hedges  of  mulberries  both  white  and  red. 
The  white  mulberries  are  the  sweetest.  If 
this  is  the  wild  West,  give  me  more.  There 
are  many  varieties  of  trees,  and  they  are 
thick  as  in  the  East.  The  people  seem  to 
grow  more  cordial.  I  was  eating  mulberries 
outside  the  yard  of  a  villager.  He  asked 


64     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

me  in  where  the  eating  was  better.  And 
then  he  told  me  the  town  scandal,  while  I 
had  my  dessert. 

A  day  or  so  ago  I  hoed  corn  all  morning 
for  my  dinner.  This  I  did  cheerfully,  con- 
sidering I  had  been  given  a  good  breakfast 
at  that  farm  for  nothing.  I  feel  that  two 
good  meals  are  worth  about  a  morning's 
work  anyway.  And  then  I  had  company. 
The  elderly  owner  of  the  place  hoed  along 
with  me.  He  saved  the  country,  by  preach- 
ing to  me  the  old  fashioned  high  tariff  gos- 
pel, and  I  saved  it  by  preaching  to  him  the 
new  fashioned  Gospel  of  Beauty.  Mean- 
while the  corn  was  hoed.  Then  we  went  in 
and  ate  the  grandest  of  dinners.  That 
house  was  notable  for  having  on  its  walls 
really  artistic  pictures,  not  merely  respect- 
able pictures,  nor  yet  seed-catalogue  adver- 
tisements. 

That  night,  in  passing  through  a  village, 
I  glimpsed  a  man  washing  his  dishes  in  the 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     65 

rear  of  a  blacksmith  shop.  I  said  to  myself  r 
"Ah  ha!  Somebody  keeping  bach." 

I  knew  I  was  welcome.  There  is  no  fear 
of  the  stranger  in  such  a  place,  for  there  are 
no  ladies  to  reassure  or  propitiate.  Permis- 
sion to  sleep  on  the  floor  was  granted  as  soon 
as  asked.  I  spread  out  The  Kansas  City 
Star,  which  is  a  clean  sheet,  put  my  verses 
under  my  head  for  a  pillow  and  was  con- 
tent. Next  morning  the  sun  was  in  my  eyes. 
There  was  the  odor  of  good  fried  bacon  in 
the  air. 

"Git  up  and  eat  a  snack,  pardner,"  said 
my  friend  the  blacksmith.  And  while  I  ate 
he  told  me  the  story  of  his  life. 

I  had  an  amusing  experience  at  the  town 
of  Belton.  I  had  given  an  entertainment 
at  the  hotel  on  the  promise  of  a  night's  lodg- 
ing. I  slept  late.  Over  my  transom  came 
the  breakfast-table  talk.  "That  was  a  hot 
entertainment  that  young  bum  gave  us  last 
night,"  said  one  man.  "He  ought  to  get  to 
work,  the  dirty  lazy  loafer,"  said  another. 


66     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

The  schoolmaster  spoke  up  in  an  effort 
not  to  condescend  to  his  audience:  "He  is 
evidently  a  fraud.  I  talked  to  him  a  long 
time  after  the  entertainment.  The  pieces 
he  recited  were  certainly  not  his  own.  I  have 
read  some  of  them  somewhere.  It  is  too 
easy  a  way  to  get  along,  especially  when 
the  man  is  as  able  to  work  as  this  one.  Of 
course  in  the  old  days  literary  men  used  to 
be  obliged  to  do  such  things.  But  it  isn't 
at  all  necessary  in  the  Twentieth  Century. 
Real  poets  are  highly  paid."  Another  spoke 
up:  "I  don't  mind  a  fake,  but  he  is  a  rot- 
ten reciter,  anyhow.  If  he  had  said  one 
more  I  would  have  just  walked  right  out. 
You  noticed  ol'  Mis'  Smith  went  home  after 
that  piece  about  the  worms."  Then  came  the 
landlord's  voice:  "After  the  show  was  over 
I  came  pretty  near  not  letting  him  have  his 
room.  All  I've  got  to  say  is  he  don't  get 
any  breakfast." 

I  dressed,  opened  the  doorway  serenely, 
and  strolled  past  the  table,  smiling  with  all 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     67 

the  ease  of  a  minister  at  his  own  church- 
social.  In  my  most  ornate  manner  I  thanked 
the  landlord  and  landlady  for  their  extreme 
kindness.  I  assumed  that  not  one  of  the  gen- 
tle-folk had  intended  to  have  me  hear  their 
analysis.  'Twas  a  grand  exit.  Yet,  in  plain 
language,  these  people  "got  my  goat."  I 
have  struggled  with  myself  all  morning,  al- 
most on  the  point  of  ordering  a  marked  copy 
of  a  magazine  sent  to  that  smart  school- 
master. "Evidently  a  fraud!"  Indeed! 

"Coin'  wes'harvesin'?" 

"Yes,  yes.  I  think  I  will  harvest  when  I 
get  to  Great  Bend." 

JUNE  18,  1912.  Approaching  Emporia. 
I  am  sitting  in  the  hot  sun  by  the  Santa  Fe 
tracks,  after  two  days  of  walking  those 
tracks  in  the  rain.  I  am  near  a  queer  little 
Mexican  house  built  of  old  railroad  ties. 

I  had  had  two  sticks  of  candy  begged 
from  a  grocer  for  breakfast.  I  was  keep- 
ing warm  by  walking  fast.  Because  of  the 


68     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

muddy  roads  and  the  sheets  of  rain  coming 
down  it  was  impossible  to  leave  the  tracks. 
It  was  almost  impossible  to  make  speed  since 
the  ballast  underfoot  was  almost  all  of  it 
big  rattling  broken  stone.  I  had  walked 
that  Santa  Fe  railroad  a  day  and  a  half  in 
the  drizzle  and  downpour.  It  was  a  little 
past  noon,  and  my  scanty  inner  fuel  was 
almost  used  up.  I  dared  not  stop  a  minute 
now,  lest  I  catch  cold.  There  was  no  station 
in  sight  ahead.  When  the  mists  lifted  I  saw 
that  the  tracks  went  on  and  on,  straight  west 
to  the  crack  of  doom,  not  even  a  water-tank 
in  sight.  The  mists  came  down,  then  lifted 
once  more,  and,  as  though  I  were  Childe 
Roland,  I  suddenly  saw  a  shack  to  the  right, 
in  dimensions  about  seven  feet  each  way. 
It  was  mostly  stove-pipe,  and  that  pipe  was 
pouring  out  enough  smoke  to  make  three  of 
Aladdin's  Jinns.  I  presume  some  one  heard 
me  whistling.  The  little  door  opened.  Two 
heads  popped  out,  "Come  in,  you  slab-sided 
hobo,"  they  yelled  affectionately.  "Come  in 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     69 

and  get  dry."  And  so  my  heart  was  made 
suddenly  light  after  a  day  and  a  half  of 
hard  whistling. 

At  the  inside  end  of  that  busy  smoke- 
stack was  a  roaring  redhot  stove  about  as 
big  as  a  hat.  It  had  just  room  enough  on 
top  for  three  steaming  coffee  cans  at  a  time. 
There  were  four  white  men  with  their  chins 
on  their  knees  completely  occupying  the 
floor  of  one  side  of  the  mansion,  and  four 
Mexicans  filled  the  other.  Every  man  was 
hunched  up  to  take  as  little  room  as  possi- 
ble. It  appeared  that  my  only  chance  was 
to  move  the  tins  and  sit  on  the  stove.  But 
one  Mexican  sort  of  sat  on  another  Mexican 
and  the  new  white  man  was  accommodated. 
These  fellows  were  a  double-section  gang, 
for  the  track  is  double  all  along  here. 

I  dried  out  pretty  quick.  The  men  began 
to  pass  up  the  coffee  off  the  stove.  It 
strangled  and  blistered  me,  it  was  so  hot. 
The  men  were  almost  to  the  bottom  of  the 
food  sections  of  their  buckets  and  were  be- 


70     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

ginning  to  throw  perfectly  good  sandwiches 
and  extra  pieces  of  pie  through  the  door. 
I  said  that  if  any  man  had  anything  to  throw 
away  would  he  just  wait  till  I  stepped  out- 
side so  I  could  catch  it.  They  handed  me 
all  I  could  ever  imagine  a  man  eating.  It 
rained  and  rained  and  rained,  and  I  ate  till 
I  could  eat  no  more.  One  man  gave  me  for 
dessert  the  last  half  of  his  cup  of  stewed 
raisins  along  with  his  own  spoon.  Good 
raisins  they  were,  too.  A  Mexican  urged 
upon  me  some  brown  paper  and  cigarette 
tobacco.  I  was  sorry  I  did  not  smoke.  The 
men  passed  up  more  and  more  hot  coffee. 

That  coffee  made  me  into  a  sort  of  thermos 
bottle.  On  the  strength  of  it  I  walked  all 
afternoon  through  sheets  and  cataracts. 
When  dark  came  I  slept  in  wet  clothes  in  a 
damp  blanket  in  the  hay  of  a  windy  livery- 
stable  without  catching  cold. 

Now  it  is  morning.  The  sky  is  reasonably 
clear,  the  weather  is  reasonably  warm,  but  I 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     71 

am  no  longer  a  thermos  bottle,  no,  no.  I  am 
sitting  on  the  hottest  rock  I  can  find,  letting 
the  sun  go  through  my  bones.  The  coffee 
in  me  has  turned  at  last  to  ice  and  snow. 
Emporia,  the  Athens  of  America,  is  just 
ahead.  Oh,  for  a  hot  bath  and  a  clean  shirt ! 
A  mad  dog  tried  to  bite  me  yesterday 
morning,  when  I  made  a  feeble  attempt  to 
leave  the  track.  When  I  was  once  back  on 
the  ties,  he  seemed  afraid  and  would  not 
come  closer.  His  bark  was  the  ghastliest 
thing  I  ever  heard.  As  for  his  bite,  he  did 
not  get  quite  through  my  shoe-heel. 

EMPORIA,  KANSAS,  JUNE  19,  1912.  On 
inquiring  at  the  Emporia  General  De- 
livery for  mail,  I  found  your  letter  telling 
me  to  call  upon  your  friend  Professor  Kerr. 
He  took  my  sudden  appearance  most  kind- 
ly, and  pardoned  my  battered  attire  and  the 
mud  to  the  knees.  After  a  day  in  his  house 
I  am  ready  to  go  on,  dry  and  feasted  and 
warm  and  clean.  The  professor's  help 


72     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

seemed  to  come  in  just  in  time.  I  was  a  most 
weary  creature. 

Thinking  it  over  this  morning,  the  bath- 
tub appears  to  be  the  first  outstanding  ad- 
vantage the  cultured  man  has  over  the  half- 
civilized.  Quite  often  the  folk  with  swept 
houses  and  decent  cooking  who  have  given 
my  poems  discriminating  attention,  who 
have  given  me  good  things  to  eat,  forget, 
even  when  they  entertain  him  overnight, 
that  the  stranger  would  like  to  soak  himself 
thoroughly.  Many  of  the  working  people 
seem  to  keep  fairly  clean  with  the  washpan 
as  their  principal  ally.  But  the  tub  is  indis- 
pensable to  the  mendicant  in  the  end,  unless 
he  is  walking  through  a  land  of  crystal 
waterfalls,  like  North  Georgia. 

I  am  an  artificial  creature  at  last,  depend- 
ent, after  all,  upon  modern  plumbing.  'Tis, 
perhaps,  not  a  dignified  theme,  but  I  retired 
to  the  professor's  bathroom  and  washed  off 
the  entire  State  of  Missouri  and  the  eastern 
counties  of  Kansas,  and  did  a  deal  of 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     73 

laundry  work  on  the  sly.  This  last  was  not 
openly  confessed  to  the  professor,  but  he 
might  have  guessed,  I  was  so  cold  on  the 
front  porch  that  night. 

I  shall  not  soon  lose  the  memory  of  this 
the  first  day  of  emergence  from  the  strait 
paths  of  St.  Francis,  this  first  meeting,  since 
I  left  Springfield,  with  a  person  on  whom  I 
had  a  conventional  social  claim.  I  had  for- 
gotten what  the  delicacy  of  a  cultured  wel- 
come would  be  like.  The  professor's  table 
was  a  marvel  to  me.  I  was  astonished  to 
discover  there  were  such  fine  distinctions  in 
food  and  linen.  And  for  all  my  troubadour 
profession,  I  had  almost  forgotten  there 
were  such  distinctions  in  books.  I  have 
hardly  seen  one  magazine  since  I  left  you. 
The  world  where  I  have  been  moving  reads 
nothing  but  newspapers.  It  is  confusing  to 
bob  from  one  world  to  the  other,  to  zig-zag 
across  the  social  dead-line.  I  sat  in  the  pro- 
fessor's library  a  very  mixed-up  person,  feel- 
ing I  could  hardly  stay  a  minute,  yet  too 


74     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

heavy-footed  to  stir  an  inch,  and  immensely 
grateful  and  relaxed. 

Sooner  or  later  I  am  going  to  step  up  into 
the  rarefied  civilized  air  once  too  often  and 
stay  there  in  spite  of  myself.  I  shall  get  a 
little  too  fond  of  the  china  and  old  silver, 
and  forget  the  fields.  Books  and  teacups 
and  high-brow  conversations  are  awfully  in- 
sinuating things,  if  you  give  them  time  to 
be.  One  gets  along  somehow,  and  pleasure 
alternates  with  pain,  and  the  sum  is  the  joy 
of  life,  while  one  is  below.  But  to  quit  is 
like  coming  up  to  earth  after  deep-sea  diving 
in  a  heavy  suit.  One  scarcely  realizes  he  has 
been  under  heavier-than-air  pressure,  and 
has  been  fighting  off  great  forces,  till  he  has 
taken  off  his  diving  helmet,  as  it  were.  And 
yet  there  is  a  baffling  sense  of  futility  in  the 
restful  upper  air.  I  remember  it  once,  long 
ago,  in  emerging  in  Warren,  Ohio,  and  once 
in  emerging  in  Macon,  Georgia: — the  feel- 
ing that  the  upper  world  is  all  tissue  paper, 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     75 

that  the  only  choice  a  real  man  can  make  is 
to  stay  below  with  the  great  forces  of  life 
forever,  even  though  he  be  a  tramp — the 
feeling  that,  to  be  a  little  civilized,  we  sac- 
rifice enormous  powers  and  joys.  For  all 
I  was  so  tired  and  so  very  grateful  to  the 
professor,  I  felt  like  a  bull  in  a  china  shop. 
I  should  have  been  out  in  the  fields,  eating 
grass. 

THE  KALLYOPE  YELL 

[Loudly  and  rapidly  with  a  leader,  College 
yell  fashion} 


Proud  men 

Eternally 

Go  about, 

Slander  me, 

Call  me  the  "Calliope.' 

Sizz 

Fizz  . 


76     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

II 

I  am  the  Gutter  Dream, 

Tune-maker,  born  of  steam, 

Tooting  joy,  tooting  hope. 

I  am  the  Kallyope, 

Car  called  the  Kallyope. 

Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO! 

See  the  flags:   snow-white  tent, 

See  the  bear  and  elephant, 

See  the  monkey  jump  the  rope, 

Listen  to  the  Kallyope,  Kallyope,  Kallyope! 

Soul  of  the  rhinoceros 

And  the  hippopotamus 

(Listen  to  the  lion  roar!) 

Jaguar,  cockatoot, 

Loons,  owls, 

Hoot,  Hoot. 

Listen  to  the  lion  roar, 

Listen  to  the  lion  roar, 

Listen  to  the  lion  R-O-A-R! 

Hear  the  leopard  cry  for  gore, 

Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO  ! 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     77 

Hail  the  bloody  Indian  band, 

Hail,  all  hail  the  popcorn  stand, 

Hail  to  Barnum's  picture  there, 

People's  idol  everywhere, 

Whoop,  whoop,  whoop,  WHOOP! 

Music  of  the  mob  am  I, 

Circus  day's  tremendous  cry: — 

I  am  the  Kallyope,  Kallyope,  Kallyope! 

Hoot  toot,  hoot  toot,  hoot  toot,  hoot  toot, 

Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO! 

Sizz,  fizz 

Ill 

Born  of  mobs,  born  of  steam, 
Listen  to  my  golden  dream, 
Listen  to  my  golden  dream, 
Listen  to  my  G-OL-D-E-N  D-R-E-A-M! 
Whoop  whoop  whoop  whoop  WHOOP! 
I  will  blow  the  proud  folk  low, 
Humanize  the  dour  and  slow, 
I  will  shake  the  proud  folk  down, 
(Listen  to  the  lion  roar!) 
Popcorn  crowds  shall  rule  the  town — 


78     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO! 

Steam  shall  work  melodiously, 

Brotherhood  increase. 

You'll  see  the  world  and  all  it  holds 

For  f .f ty  cents  apiece. 

Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO! 

Every  day  a  circus  day. 

What? 

Well,  almost  every  day. 
Nevermore  the  sweater's  den, 
Nevermore  the  prison  pen. 
Gone  the  war  on  land  and  sea 
That  aforetime  troubled  men. 
Nations  all  in  amity, 
Happy  in  their  plumes  arrayed 
In  the  long  bright  street  parade. 
Bands  a-playing  every  day. 

What? 

Well,  almost  every  day. 

I  am  the  Kallyope,  Kallyope,  Kallyope! 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     79 

Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO! 
Hoot,  toot,  hoot,  toot, 
Whoop  whoop  whoop  whoop, 
Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO! 
Sizz,  fizz 

iv; 

Every  soul 
Resident 

In  the  earth's  one  circus  tent! 
Every  man  a  trapeze  king 
Then  a  pleased  spectator  there. 
On  the  benches !     In  the  ring ! 
While  the  neighbors  gawk  and  stare 
And  the  cheering  rolls  along. 
Almost  every  day  a  race 
When  the  merry  starting  gong 
Rings,  each  chariot  on  the  line, 
Every  driver  fit  and  fine 
With  the  steel-spring  Roman  grace. 
Almost  every  day  a  dream, 
Almost  every  day  a  dream. 
Every  girl, 


80     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Maid  or  wife, 

Wild  with  music, 

Eyes  a-gleam 

With  that  marvel  called  desire: 

Actress,  princess,  fit  for  life, 

Armed  with  honor  like  a  knife, 

Jumping  thro'  the  hoops  of  fire. 

(Listen  to  the  lion  roar!) 

Making  all  the  children  shout 

Clowns  shall  tumble  all  about, 

Painted  high  and  full  of  song 

While  the  cheering  rolls  along, 

Tho'  they  scream, 

Tho'  they  rage, 

Every  beast 

In  his  cage, 

Every  beast 

In  his  den 

That  aforetime  troubled  men. 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     81 


I  am  the  Kallyope,  Kallyope,  Kallyope, 
Tooting  hope,  tooting  hope,  tooting  hope, 

tooting  hope ; 

Shaking  window-pane  and  door 
With  a  crashing  cosmic  tune, 
With  the  war-cry  of  the  spheres, 
Rhythm  of  the  roar  of  noon, 
Rhythm  of  Niagara's  roar, 
Voicing  planet,  star  and  moon, 
SHRIEKING  of  the  better  years. 
Prophet-singers  will  arise, 
Prophets  coming  after  me, 
Sing  my  song  in  softer  guise 
With  more  delicate  surprise; 
I  am  but  the  pioneer 
Voice  of  the  Democracy; 
I  am  the  gutter  dream, 
I  am  the  golden  dream, 
Singing  science,  singing  steam. 
I  will  blow  the  proud  folk  down, 


82     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

(Listen  to  the  lion  roar!) 

I  am  the  Kallyope,  Kallyope,  Kallyope, 

Tooting  hope,  tooting  hope,  tooting  hope, 

tooting  hope, 

Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO! 
Hoot,  toot,  hoot  toot,  hoot  toot,  hoot  toot, 
Whoop  whoop,  whoop  whoop, 
Whoop  whoop,  whoop  whoop, 
Willy  willy  willy  wah  HOO! 


Fizz  ..... 

SUNDAY  MORNING,  JUNE  23,  1912.    I  am 

writing  on  the  top  of  a  pile  of  creosote- 
soaked  ties  between  the  Santa  Fe  tracks  and 
the  trail  that  runs  parallel  to  the  tracks. 
Florence,  Kansas,  is  somewhere  ahead. 

In  the  East  the  railroads  and  machinery 
choke  the  land  to  death  and  it  was  there  I 
made  my  rule  against  them.  But  the  far- 
ther West  I  go  the  more  the  very  life  of  the 
country  seems  to  depend  upon  them.  I  sup- 
pose, though,  that  some  day,  even  out  West 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     83 

here,  the  rule  against  the  railroad  will  be  a 
good  rule. 

Meanwhile  let  me  say  that  my  Ruskinian 
prejudices  are  temporarily  overcome  by  the 
picturesqueness  and  efficiency  of  the  Santa 
Fe.  It  is  double-tracked,  and  every  four 
miles  is  kept  in  order  by  a  hand-car  crew 
that  is  spinning  back  and  forth  all  the  time. 
The  air  seems  to  be  full  of  hand-cars. 

Walking  in  a  hurry  to  make  a  certain 
place  by  nightfall  I  have  become  acquainted 
with  these  section  hands,  and,  most  delight- 
ful to  relate,  have  ridden  in  their  iron  con- 
veyances, putting  my  own  back  into  the 
work.  Half  or  three-fourths  of  the  em- 
ployees are  Mexicans  who  are  as  ornamental 
in  the  actual  landscape  as  they  are  in  a  Rem- 
ington drawing.  These  Mexicans  are  tract- 
able serfs  of  the  Santa  Fe.  If  there  were 
enough  miles  of  railroad  in  Mexico  to  keep 
all  the  inhabitants  busy  on  section,  perhaps 
the  internal  difficulties  could  be  ended. 
These  peons  live  peacefully  next  to  the 


84     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

tracks  in  houses  built  by  the  company  from 
old  ties.  The  ties  are  placed  on  end,  side  by 
side,  with  plaster  in  the  cracks,  on  a  tiny 
oblong  two-room  plan.  There  is  a  little 
roofed  court  between  the  rooms.  A  farmer 
told  me  that  the  company  tried  Greek  serfs 
for  a  while,  but  they  made  trouble  for  out- 
siders and  murdered  each  other. 

The  road  is  busy  as  busy  can  be.  Almost 
any  time  one  can  see  enormous  freight-trains 
rolling  by  or  mile-a-minute  passenger  trains. 
Gates  are  provided  for  each  farmer's 
right  of  way.  I  was  told  by  an  exceptional 
Mexican  with  powers  of  speech  that  the  effi- 
cient dragging  of  the  wagon-roads,  espe- 
cially the  "New  Santa  Fe  Trail"  that  fol- 
lows the  railroad,  is  owing  to  the  missionary 
work  of  King,  the  split-log  drag  man,  who 
was  employed  to  go  up  and  down  this  land 
agitating  his  hobby. 

When  the  weather  is  good,  touring  auto- 
mobiles whiz  past.  They  have  pennants 
showing  they  are  from  Kansas  City,  Em- 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     85 

poria,  New  York  or  Chicago.  They  have 
camping  canvas  and  bedding  on  the  back 
seats  of  the  car,  or  strapped  in  the  rear. 
They  are  on  camping  tours  to  Colorado 
Springs  and  the  like  pleasure  places.  Some 
few  avow  they  are  going  to  the  coast.  About 
five  o'clock  in  the  evening  some  man  making 
a  local  trip  is  apt  to  come  along  alone.  He 
it  is  that  wants  the  other  side  of  the  machine 
weighed  down.  He  it  is  that  will  offer  me  a 
ride  and  spin  me  along  from  five  to  twenty- 
five  miles  before  supper.  This  delightful 
use  that  may  be  made  of  an  automobile  in 
rounding  out  a  day's  walk  has  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  mending  my  prejudice 
against  it,  despite  the  grand  airs  of  the  tour- 
ists that  whirl  by  at  midday.  I  still  main- 
tain that  the  auto  is  a  carnal  institution,  to 
be  shunned  by  the  truly  spiritual,  but  there 
are  times  when  I,  for  one,  get  tired  of  being 
spiritual. 

Much  of  the  country  east  of  Emporia  is 
hilly  and  well-wooded  and  hedged  like  Mis- 


86     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

souri.  But  now  I  am  getting  into  the  range 
region.  Yesterday,  after  several  miles  of 
treeless  land  that  had  never  known  the 
plough,  I  said  to  myself:  "Now  I  am  really 
West."  And  my  impression  was  reinforced 
when  I  reached  a  grand  baronial  establish- 
ment called  "Clover  Hill  Ranch."  It  was 
flanked  by  the  houses  of  the  retainers.  In 
the  foreground  and  a  little  to  the  side  was 
the  great  stone  barn  for  the  mules  and  horses. 
Back  on  the  little  hill,  properly  introduced 
by  ceremonious  trees,  was  the  ranch  house 
itself.  And  before  it  was  my  lord  on  his 
ranching  charger.  The  aforesaid  lord 
created  quite  an  atmosphere  of  lordliness  as 
he  refused  work  in  the  alfalfa  harvest  to  a 
battered  stranger  who  bowed  too  low  and 
begged  too  hard,  perhaps.  On  the  porch 
was  my  lady,  feeding  bread  and  honey  to  the 
beautiful  young  prince  of  the  place. 

I  have  not  yet  reached  the  wheat  belt. 
Since  the  alfalfa  harvest  is  on  here,  I  shall 
try  for  that  a  bit. 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     87 

SUNDAY  AFTERNOON,  JUNE  30,  1912.  In 
the  spare  room  of  a  Mennonite  farmer,  who 
lives  just  inside  the  wheat  belt. 

This  is  going  to  be  a  long  Sunday  after- 
noon ;  so  make  up  your  minds  for  a  long  let- 
ter. I  did  not  get  work  in  the  alfalfa.  Yet 
there  is  news.  I  have  been  staying  a  week 
with  this  Mennonite  family  shocking  wheat 
for  them,  though  I  am  not  anywhere  near 
Great  Bend. 

Before  I  tell  you  of  the  harvest,  I  must 
tell  you  of  these  Mennonites.  They  are  a 
dear  people.  I  have  heard  from  their  rev- 
erent lips  the  name  of  their  founder,  Menno 
Simonis,  who  was  born  about  the  time  of 
Columbus  and  Luther  and  other  such 
worthies.  They  are  as  opposed  to  carnal 
literature  as  I  am  to  tailor-made  clothes, 
and  I  hold  they  are  perfectly  correct  in  al- 
lowing no  fashion  magazines  in  the  house. 
Such  modern  books  as  they  read  deal  with 
practical  local  philanthropies  and  great  in- 
ternational mission  movements,  and  their  in- 


88     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

terdenominational  feelings  for  all  Christen- 
dom are  strong.  Yet  they  hold  to  their  an- 
cient verities,  and  antiquity  broods  over  their 
meditations. 

For  instance  I  found  in  their  bookcase  an 
endless  dialogue  epic  called  The  Wandering 
Soul,  in  which  this  soul,  seeking  mainly  for 
information,  engages  in. stilted  conversation 
with  Adam,  Noah,  and  Simon  Cleophas. 
Thereby  the  Wandering  Soul  is  informed 
as  to  the  orthodox  history  and  chronology  of 
the  world  from  the  Creation  to  the  destruc- 
tion of  Jerusalem.  The  wood-cuts  are  de- 
votional. They  are  worth  walking  to  Kan- 
sas to  see.  The  book  had  its  third  trans- 
lation into  Pennsylvania  English  in  1840, 
but  several  American  editions  had  existed 
in  German  before  that,  and  several  German 
editions  in  Germany.  It  was  originally 
written  in  the  Dutch  language  and  was  pop- 
ular among  the  Mennonites  there.  But  it 
looks  as  if  it  was  printed  by  Adam  to  last 
forever  and  scare  bad  boys. 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     89 

Let  us  go  to  meeting.  All  the  women  are 
on  their  own  side  of  the  aisle.  All  of  them 
have  a  fairly  uniform  Quakerish  sort  of 
dress  of  no  prescribed  color.  In  front  are 
the  most  pious,  who  wear  a  black  scoop-bon- 
net. Some  have  taken  this  off,  and  show 
the  inevitable  "prayer-covering"  underneath. 
It  is  the  plainest  kind  of  a  lace-cap,  awfully 
coquettish  on  a  pretty  head.  It  Is  intended 
to  mortify  the  flesh,  and  I  suppose  it  is  un- 
becoming to  some  women. 

All  the  scoop-bonnets  are  not  black. 
Toward  the  middle  of  the  church,  behold  a 
cream-satin,  a  soft  gray,  a  dull  moon-gold. 
One  young  woman,  moved,  I  fear,  by  the 
devil,  turns  and  looks  across  the  aisle  at  us. 
An  exceedingly  demure  bow  is  tied  all  too 
sweetly  under  the  chin,  in  a  decorous  butter- 
fly style.  Fie!  fie!  Is  this  mortifying  the 
flesh?  And  I  note  with  pain  that  the  black 
bonnets  grow  fewer  and  fewer  toward  the 
rear  of  the  meeting  house. 

Here  come  the   children,   with  bobbing 


90     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

headgear  of  every  color  of  the  rainbow,  yet 
the  same  scoop-pattern  still.  They  have  been 
taking  little  walks  and  runs  between  Sun- 
day-school and  church,  and  are  all  flushed 
and  panting.  But  I  would  no  more  criticise 
the  color  of  their  headgear  than  the  color  in 
their  faces.  Some  of  them  squeeze  in  among 
the  black  rows  in  front  and  make  piety  rea- 
sonable. But  we  noted  by  the  door  as  they 
entered  something  that  both  the  church  and 
the  world  must  abhor.  Seated  as  near  to  the 
men's  side  as  they  can  get,  with  a  mixture 
of  shame  and  defiance  in  their  faces,  are  cer- 
tain daughters  of  the  Mennonites  who  in- 
sist on  dressing  after  the  fashions  that  come 
from  Paris  and  Kansas  City  and  Emporia. 
By  the  time  the  rumors  of  what  is  proper  in 
millinery  have  reached  this  place  they  are  a 
disconcerting  mixture  of  cherries,  feathers 
and  ferns.  And  somehow  there  are  too  many 
mussy  ribbons  on  the  dresses. 

We  can  only  guess  how  these  rebels  must 
suffer  under  the  concentrated  silent  prayers 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     91 

of  the  godly.  Poor  honest  souls !  they  take 
to  this  world's  vain  baggage  and  overdo  it. 
Why  do  they  not  make  up  their  minds  to 
serve  the  devil  sideways,  like  that  sly  puss 
with  the  butterfly  bow? 

On  the  men's  side  of  the  house  the  divi- 
sion on  dress  is  more  acute.  The  Holiness 
movement,  the  doctrine  of  the  Second  Bless- 
ing that  has  stirred  many  rural  Methodist 
groups,  has  attacked  the  Mennonites  also. 
Those  who  dispute  for  this  new  ism  of  sanc- 
tification  leave  off  their  neckties  as  a  sign. 
Those  that  retain  their  neckties,  satisfied 
with  what  Menno  Simonis  taught,  have  a 
hard  time  remaining  in  a  state  of  complete 
calm.  The  temptation  to  argue  the  matter 
is  almost  more  than  flesh  can  bear. 

But,  so  far  as  I  could  discover,  there  was 

• 

no  silent  prayer  over  the  worst  lapse  of  these 
people.  What  remains  of  my  Franciscan 
soul  was  hurt  to  discover  that  the  buggy- 
shed  of  the  meeting-house  was  full  of  auto- 
mobiles. And  to  meet  a  Mennonite  on  the 


92     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

road  without  a  necktie,  his  wife  in  the  black- 
est of  bonnets,  honking  along  in  one  of  those 
glittering  brazen  machines,  almost  shakes 
my  confidence  in  the  Old  Jerusalem  Gospel. 

Yet  let  me  not  indulge  in  disrespect. 
Every  spiritual  warfare  must  abound  in  its 
little  ironies.  They  are  keeping  their  rule 
against  finery  as  well  as  I  am  keeping  mine 
against  the  railroad.  And  they  have  their 
own  way  of  not  being  corrupted  by  money. 
Their  ministry  is  unsalaried.  Their  preach- 
ers are  sometimes  helpers  on  the  farms, 
sometimes  taken  care  of  outright,  the  same 
as  I  am. 

As  will  later  appear,  despite  some  incon- 
sistencies, the  Mennonites  have  a  piety  as 
literal  as  any  to  be  found  on  the  earth.  Since 
they  are  German  there  is  no  lack  of  thought 
in  their  system.  I  attended  one  of  their 
quarterly  conferences  and  I  have  never 
heard  better  discourses  on  the  distinctions 
between  the  four  gospels.  The  men  who 
spoke  were  scholars. 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     93 

The  Mennonites  make  it  a  principle  to  ig- 
nore politics,  and  are  non-resistants  in  war. 
I  have  read  in  the  life  of  one  of  their  heroes 
what  a  terrible  time  his  people  had  in  the 
Shenandoah  valley  in  the  days  of  Sheridan. 
.  .  .  Three  solemn  tracts  are  here  on  my 
dresser.  The  first  is  against  church  organs, 
embodying  a  plea  for  simplicity  and  the 
spending  of  such  money  on  local  benevo- 
lences and  world-wide  missions.  The  tract 
aptly  compares  the  church-organ  to  the  Thi- 
betan prayer-wheel,  and  later  to  praying  by 
phonograph.  A  song  is  a  prayer  to  them, 
and  they  sing  hymns  and  nothing  but  hymns 
all  week  long. 

The  next  tract  is  on  non-conformity  to 
this  world,  and  insists  our  appearance  should 
indicate  our  profession,  and  that  fashions 
drive  the  poor  away  from  the  church.  It 
condemns  jewels  and  plaiting  of  the  hair, 
etc.,  and  says  that  such  things  stir  up  a 
wicked  and  worldly  lust  in  the  eyes  of  youth. 
This  tract  goes  so  far  as  to  put  worldly  pic- 


94     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

tures  under  the  ban.  Then  comes  another, 
headed  Bible  Teaching  on  Dress.  It  goes 
on  to  show  that  every  true  Christian,  espe- 
cially that  vain  bird,  the  female,  should  wear 
something  like  the  Mennonite  uniform  to 
indicate  the  line  of  separation  from  "the 
World."  I  have  a  good  deal  of  sympathy 
for  all  this,  for  indeed  is  it  not  briefly  com- 
prehended in  my  own  rule:  "Carry  no  bag- 
gage"? 

These  people  celebrate  communion  every 
half  year,  and  at  the  same  time  they  practise 
the  ritual  of  washing  the  feet.  Since  Isa- 
dora Duncan  has  rediscovered  the  human 
foot  aesthetically,  who  dares  object  to  it  in 
ritual?  It  is  all  a  question  of  what  we 
are  trained  to  expect.  Certainly  these  people 
are  respecters  of  the  human  foot  and  not 
ashamed  to  show  it.  Next  to  the  way  their 
women  have  of  making  a  dash  to  find  their 
gauzy  prayer-covering,  which  they  put  on 
for  grace  at  table  and  Bible-lesson  before 
breakfast,  their  most  striking  habit  is  the 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     95 

way  both  men  and  women  go  about  in  very 
clean  bare  feet  after  supper.  Next  to  this 
let  me  note  their  resolve  to  have  no  profane 
hour  whatsoever.  When  not  actually  at 
work  they  sit  and  sing  hymns,  each  Christian 
on  his  own  hook  as  he  has  leisure. 

My  first  evening  among  these  dear 
strangers  I  was  sitting  alone  by  the  front 
door,  looking  out  on  the  wheat.  I  was 
thrilled  to  see  the  fairest  member  of  the 
household  enter,  not  without  grace  and  dig- 
nity. Her  prayer  covering  was  on  her  head, 
her  white  feet  were  shining  like  those  of 
Nicolette  and  her  white  hymn-book  was  in 
her  hand.  She  ignored  me  entirely.  She 
was  rapt  in  trance.  She  sat  by  the  window 
and  sang  through  the  book,  looking  straight 
at  a  rose  in  the  wall-paper. 

I  lingered  there,  reading  The  Wandering 
Soul  just  as  oblivious  of  her  presence  as  she 
was  of  mine.  Oh,  no;  there  was  no  art  in 
the  selection  of  her  songs !  I  remember  one 
which  was  to  this  effect: 


96     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

"Don't  let  it  be  said: 
'Too  late,  too  late 
To  enter  that  Golden  Gate/ 
Be  ready,  for  soon 
The  time  will  come 
mo  enter  that  Golden  Gate." 


On  the  whole  she  had  as  much  right  to 
plunk  down  and  sing  hymns  out  of  season 
as  I  have  to  burst  in  and  quote  poetry  to 
peaceful  and  unprotected  households. 

I  would  like  to  insert  a  discourse  here  on 
the  pleasure  and  the  naturalness  and  the  hu- 
manness  of  testifying  to  one's  gospel  what- 
ever that  gospel  may  be,  barefooted  or  gol- 
den-slippered or  iron-shod.  The  best  we 
may  win  in  return  may  be  but  a  kindly 
smile.  We  may  never  make  one  convert. 
Still  the  duty  of  testifying  remains,  and 
is  enjoined  by  the  invisible  powers  and 
makes  for  the  health  of  the  soul.  This  Men- 
nonite  was  a  priestess  of  her  view  of  the 
truth  and  comes  of  endless  generations  of 
such  snow-footed  apostles.  I  presume  the 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     97 

sect  ceased  to  enlarge  when  the  Quakers 
ceased  to  thrive,  but  I  make  my  guess  that 
it  does  not  crumble  as  fast  as  the  Quakers, 
having  more  German  stolidity. 

Let  me  again  go  forward,  testifying  to 
my  particular  lonely  gospel  in  the  face  of 
such  pleasant  smiles  and  incredulous  ques- 
tions as  may  come.  I  wish  I  could  start  a 
sturdy  sect  like  old  Menno  Simonis  did. 
They  should  dress  as  these  have  done,  and 
be  as  stubborn  and  rigid  in  their  discipline. 
They  should  farm  as  these  have  done,  but 
on  reaching  the  point  where  the  Mennonite 
buys  the  automobile,  that  money  and  energy 
should  go  into  the  making  of  cross-roads 
palaces  for  the  people,  golden  as  the  harvest 
field,  and  disciplined  well-parked  villages, 
good  as  a  psalm,  and  cities  fair  as  a  Men- 
nonite lady  in  her  prayer-covering,  delicate 
and  noble  as  Athens  the  unforgotten,  the 
divine. 

The  Mennonite  doctrine  of  non-participa- 
tion in  war  or  politics  leads  them  to  confine 


98     THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

their  periodic  literature  to  religious  journals 
exclusively,  plus  The  Drover's  Journal  to 
keep  them  up  to  date  on  the  prices  of  farm- 
products.  There  is  only  one  Mennonite  po- 
litical event,  the  coming  of  Christ  to  judge 
the  earth.  Of  that  no  man  knoweth  the 
day  or  the  hour.  We  had  best  be  prepared 
and  not  play  politics  or  baseball  or  any- 
thing. Just  keep  unspotted  and  harvest  the 
wheat. 

"Coin'  wes'  harvesin'?" 

I  have  harvested,  thank  you.  Four  days 
and  a  half  I  have  shocked  wheat  in  these 
prayer-consecrated  fields  that  I  see  even  now 
from  my  window.  And  I  have  good  hard 
dollars  in  my  pocket,  which  same  dollars  are 
against  my  rules. 

I  will  tell  you  of  the  harvest  in  the  next 
letter. 


WALKING  INTO  KANSAS     99 

ON    THE    ROAD    TO   NOWHERE 

On  the  road  to  nowhere 
What  wild  oats  did  you  sow 
When  you  left  your  father's  house 
With  your  cheeks  aglow? 
Eyes  so  strained  and  eager 
To  see  what  you  might  see? 
Were  you  thief  or  were  you  fool 
Or  most  nobly  free? 
Were  the  tramp-days  knightly, 
True  sowing  of   wild   seed? 
Did  you  dare  to  make  the  songs 
Vanquished  workmen  need? 
Did  you  waste  much  money 
To  deck  a  leper's  feast? 
Love  the  truth,  defy  the  crowd, 
Scandalize  the  priest? 
On   the  road   to  nowhere 
What  wild  oats  did  you  sow? 
Stupids  find  the  nowhere-road 
Dusty,  grim  and  slow. 
Ere  their  sowing's  ended 
They  turn  them  on  their  track: 
Look  at  the  caitiff  craven  wights 
Repentant,  hurrying  back! 


100   THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Grown  ashamed  of  nowhere, 
Of  rags  endured  for  years, 
Lust  for  velvet  in  their  hearts, 
Pierced  with  Mammon's  spears. 
All   but   a  few  fanatics 
Give  up  their  darling  goal, 
Seek  to  be  as  others  are, 
Stultify  the  soul. 
Reapings  now  confront  them, 
Glut  them,  or  destroy, 
Curious  seeds,  grain  or  weeds, 
Sown  with  awful  joy. 
Hurried  is  their  harvest, 
They  make  soft  peace  with  men. 
Pilgrims  pass.     They  care  not, 
Will  not  tramp  again. 
0  nowhere,  golden  nowhere! 
Sages  and  fools  go  on 
To  your  chaotic  ocean, 
To  your  tremendous  dawn. 
Far  in  your  fair  dream-haven, 
Is  nothing  or  is  all   .    .    . 
They  press  on,  singing,  sowing 
Wild  deeds  without  recall.1 


IV 

In  Kansas:  The  First  Harvest 

MONDAY  AFTERNOON,  JULY  1,  1912.  A 
little  west  of  Newton,  Kansas.  In  the  pub- 
lic library  of  a  village  whose  name  I  forget. 

Here  is  the  story  of  how  I  came  to  har- 
vest. I  was  by  chance  taking  a  short  respite 
from  the  sunshine,  last  Monday  noon,  on 
the  porch  of  the  Mennonite  farmer.  I  had 
had  dinner  further  back.  But  the  good  folk 
asked  me  to  come  in  and  have  dessert  any- 
way. It  transpired  that  one  of  the  two 
harvest  hands  was  taking  his  farewell  meal. 
He  was  obliged  to  fill  a  contract  to  work 
further  West,  a  contract  made  last  year.  I 
timidly  suggested  I  might  take  his  place. 
To  my  astonishment  I  was  engaged  at  once. 
This  fellow  was  working  for  two  dollars  a 
101 


102  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

day,  but  I  agreed  to  $1.75,  seeing  my  pre- 
decessor was  a  skilled  man  and  twice  as  big 
as  I  was.  My  wages,  as  I  discovered,  in- 
cluded three  rich  meals,  and  a  pretty  spare 
room  to  sleep  in,  and  a  good  big  bucket 
to  bathe  in  nightly. 

I  anticipate  history  at  this  point  by  telling 
how  at  the  end  of  the  week  my  wages  looked 
as  strange  to  me  as  a  bunch  of  unexpected 
ducklets  to  a  hen.  They  were  as  curious  to 
contemplate  as  a  group  of  mischievous  nieces 
who  have  come  to  spend  the  day  with  their 
embarrassed,  fluttering  maiden  aunt. 

I  took  my  wages  to  Newton,  and  spent 
all  on  the  vanities  of  this  life.  First  the 
grandest  kind  of  a  sombrero,  so  I  shall  not 
be  sun-struck  in  the  next  harvest-field,  which 
I  narrowly  escaped  in  this.  Next,  the  most 
indestructible  of  corduroys.  Then  I  had 
my  shoes  re-soled  and  bought  a  necktie  that 
was  like  the  oriflamme  of  Navarre,  and  at- 
tended to  several  other  points  of  vanity.  I 
started  out  again,  dead  broke  and  happy. 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      103 

If  I  work  hereafter  I  can  send  most  all  my 
wages  home,  for  I  am  now  in  real  travelling 
costume. 

But  why  linger  over  the  question  of  wages 
till  I  show  I  earned  those  wages? 

Let  me  tell  you  of  a  typical  wheat-har- 
vesting day.  The  field  is  two  miles  from  the 
house.  We  make  preparations  for  a  twelve- 
hour  siege.  Halters  and  a  barrel  of  water 
and  a  heap  of  alfalfa  for  the  mules,  binder- 
twine  and  oil  for  the  reaper  and  water- jugs 
for  us  are  loaded  into  the  spring  wagon. 
Two  mules  are  hitched  in  front,  two  are  led 
behind.  The  new  reaper  was  left  in  the  field 
yesterday.  We  make  haste.  We  must  be 
at  work  by  the  time  the  dew  dries.  The 
four  mules  are  soon  hitched  to  the  reaper 
and  proudly  driven  into  the  wheat  by  the  son 
of  the  old  Mennonite.  This  young  fellow 
carries  himself  with  proper  dignity  as  heir 
of  the  farm.  He  is  a  credit  to  the  father. 
He  will  not  curse  the  mules,  though  those 
animals  forget  their  religion  sometimes,  and 


104   THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

act  after  the  manner  of  their  kind.  The 
worst  he  will  do  will  be  to  call  one  of  them 
an  old  cow.  I  suppose  when  he  is  vexed 
with  a  cow  he  calls  it  an'  old  mule.  My 
other  companion  is  a  boy  of  nineteen  from  a 
Mennonite  community  in  Pennsylvania.  He 
sets  me  a  pace.  Together  we  build  the 
sheaves  into  shocks,  of  eight  or  ten  sheaves 
each,  put  so  they  will  not  be  shaken  by  an 
ordinary  Kansas  wind.  The  wind  has  been 
blowing  nearly  all  the  time  at  a  rate  which 
in  Illinois  would  mean  a  thunderstorm  in 
five  minutes,  and  sometimes  the  clouds  loom 
in  the  thunderstorm  way,  yet  there  is  not  a 
drop  of  rain,  and  the  clouds  are  soon  gone. 
In  the  course  of  the  week  the  boy  and  I 
have  wrestled  with  heavy  ripe  sheaves, 
heavier  green  sheaves,  sheaves  full  of  Rus- 
sian thistles  and  sheaves  with  the  string  off. 
The  boy,  as  he  sings  The  day-star  hath  risen, 
twists  a  curious  rope  of  straw  and  reties  the 
loose  bundles  with  one  turn  of  the  hand. 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      105 

I  try,  but  cannot  make  the  knot.  Once  all 
sheaves  were  so  bound. 

Much  of  the  wheat  must  be  cut  heavy  and 
green  because  there  is  a  liability  to  sudden 
storms  or  hail  that  will  bury  it  in  mud,  or 
soften  the  ground  and  make  it  impossible 
to  drag  the  reaper,  or  hot  winds  that  sud- 
denly ripen  the  loose  grain  and  shake  it 
into  the  earth.  So  it  is  an  important  mat- 
ter to  get  the  wheat  out  when  it  is  anywhere 
near  ready.  I  found  that  two  of  the  girls 
were  expecting  to  take  the  place  of  the  de- 
parting hand,  if  I  had  not  arrived. 

The  Mennonite  boy  picked  up  two  sheaves 
to  my  one  at  the  beginning  of  the  week. 
To-day  I  learn  to  handle  two  at  a  time  and 
he  immediately  handles  three  at  a  time.  He 
builds  the  heart  of  the  sheaf.  Then  we  add 
the  outside  together.  He  is  always  march- 
ing ahead  and  causing  me  to  feel  ashamed. 

The  Kansas  grasshopper  makes  himself 
friendly.  He  bites  pieces  out  of  the  back 
of  my  shirt  the  shape  and  size  of  the  ace 


106  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

of  spades.  Then  he  walks  into  the  door  he 
has  made  and  loses  himself.  Then  he  has 
to  be  helped  out,  in  one  way  or  another. 

The  old  farmer,  too  stiff  for  work,  comes 
out  on  his  dancing  pony  and  rides  behind  the 
new  reaper.  This  reaper  was  bought  only 
two  days  ago  and  he  beams  with  pride  upon 
it.  It  seems  that  he  and  his  son  almost 
swore,  trying  to  tinker  the  old  one.  The 
farmer  looks  with  even  more  pride  upon 
the  field,  still  a  little  green,  but  mostly 
golden.  He  dismounts  and  tests  the  grain, 
threshing  it  out  in  his  hand,  figuring  the 
average  amount  in  several  typical  heads.  He 
stands  off,  and  is  guilty  of  an  aesthetic  thrill. 
He  says  of  the  sea  of  gold:  "I  wish  I  could 
have  a  photograph  of  that."  (O  eloquent 
word,  for  a  Mennonite!)  Then  he  plays  at 
building  half  a  dozen  shocks,  then  goes  home 
till  late  in  the  afternoon.  We  three  are 
again  masters  of  the  field. 

We  are  in  a  level  part  of  Kansas,  not  a 
rolling  range  as  I  found  it  further  east. 


THE   FIRST   HARVEST      107 

The  field  is  a  floor.  Hedges  gradually  faded 
from  the  landscape  in  counties  several  days' 
journey  back,  leaving  nothing  but  unbroken 
billows  to  the  horizon.  But  the  hedges  have 
been  resumed  in  this  region.  Each  time 
round  the  enormous  field  we  stop  at  a  break 
in  the  line  of  those  untrimmed  old  thorn- 
trees.  Here  we  rest  a  moment  and  drink 
from  the  water- jug.  To  keep  from  getting 
sunstruck  I  profanely  waste  the  water, 
pouring  it  on  my  head,  and  down  my  neck 
to  my  feet.  I  came  to  this  farm  wearing 
a  derby,  and  have  had  to  borrow  a  slouch 
with  a  not-much-wider  rim  from  the  farmer. 
It  was  all  the  extra  headgear  available  in 
this  thrifty  region.  Because  of  that  not- 
much-wider  rim  my  face  is  sunburned  all 
over  every  day.  I  have  not  yet  received  my 
wages  to  purchase  my  sombrero. 

As  we  go  round  the  field,  the  Mennonite 
boy  talks  religion,  or  is  silent.  I  have  caught 
the  spirit  of  the  farm,  and  sing  all  the  hymn- 
tunes  I  can  remember.  Sometimes  the  wind 


108  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

turns  hot.  Perspiration  cannot  keep  up  with 
evaporation.  Our  skins  are  dry  as  the 
dryest  stubble.  Then  we  stand  and  wait  for 
a  little  streak  of  cool  wind.  It  is  pretty 
sure  to  come  in  a  minute.  "That's  a  nice 
air,"  says  the  boy,  and  gets  to  work.  Once 
it  was  so  hot  all  three  of  us  stopped  five 
minutes  by  the  hedge.  Then  it  was  I  told 
them  the  story  of  the  hens  I  met  just  west 
of  Emporia. 

I  had  met  ten  hens  walking  single-file  into 
the  town  of  Emporia.  I  was  astonished  to 
meet  educated  hens.  Each  one  was  swear- 
ing. I  would  not  venture,  I  added,  to  repeat 
what  they  said. 

Not  a  word  from  the  Mennonites. 

I  continued  in  my  artless  way,  showing 
how  I  stopped  the  next  to  the  last  hen, 
though  she  was  impatient  to  go  on.  I  in- 
quired "Where  are  you  all  travelling?"  She 
said  "To  Emporia."  And  so  I  asked,  "Why 
are  you  swearing  so?"  She  answered, 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      109 

"Don't  you  know  about  the  Sunday-school 
picnic?"  I  paused  in  my  story. 

No  word  from  the  Mennonites.  One  of 
them  rose  rather  impatiently. 

I  poured  some  water  on  my  head  and  con- 
tinued: "I  stopped  the  last  hen.  I  asked: 
"Why  are  you  swearing,  sister?  And  what 
about  the  picnic?"  She  replied:  "These  Em- 
poria  people  are  going  to  give  a  Sunday- 
school  picnic  day  after  to-morrow.  Mean- 
time all  us  hens  have  to  lay  devilled  eggs." 

"We  do  not  laugh  at  jokes  about  swear- 
ing," said  the  Mennonite  driver,  and  climbed 
back  on  to  his  reaper.  My  partner  strode 
solemnly  out  into  the  sun  and  began  to  pile 
sheaves. 

Each  round  we  study  our  shadows  on  the 
stubble  more  closely,  thrilled  with  the  feel- 
ing that  noon  creeps  on.  And  now,  up  the 
road  we  see  a  bit  of  dust  and  a  rig.  No,  it 
is  not  the  woman  we  are  looking  for,  but 
a  woman  with  supplies  for  other  harvesters. 
We  work  on  and  on,  while  four  disappoint- 


110  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

ing  rigs  go  by.  At  last  appears  a  sunbonnet 
we  know.  Our  especial  Mennonite  maid 
is  sitting  quite  straight  on  the  edge  of  the 
seat  and  holding  the  lines  almost  on  a  level 
with  her  chin.  She  drives  through  the  field 
toward  us.  We  motion  her  to  the  gap  in  the 
hedge. 

We  unhitch,  and  lead  the  mules  to  the  gap, 
where  she  joins  us.  With  much  high-mind- 
ed expostulation  the  men  try  to  show  the 
mules  they  should  eat  alfalfa  and  not  hedge- 
thorns.  The  mules  are  at  last  tied  out  in  the 
sun  to  a  wheel  of  the  wagon,  away  from 
temptation,  with  nothing  but  alfalfa  near 
them. 

The  meal  is  spread  with  delicacy,  yet  there 
is  a  heap  of  it.  With  a  prayer  of  thanks- 
giving, sometimes  said  by  Tilly,  sometimes 
by  one  of  the  men,  we  begin  to  eat.  To  a 
man  in  a  harvest-field  a  square  meal  is  more 
thrilling  than  a  finely-acted  play. 

The  thrill  goes  not  only  to  the  toes  and  the 
finger-tips,  but  to  the  utmost  ramifications 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      111 

of  the  spirit.  Men  indoors  in  offices,  whose 
bodies  actually  require  little,  cannot  think 
of  eating  enormously  without  thinking  of 
sodden  overeating,  with  condiments  to 
rouse,  and  heavy  meats  and  sweets  to  lull 
the  flabby  body  till  the  last  faint  remnants 
of  appetite  have  departed  and  the  man  is  a 
monument  of  sleepy  gluttony. 

Eating  in  a  harvest  field  is  never  so. 
Every  nerve  in  the  famished  body  calls  fran- 
tically for  reinforcements.  And  the  nerves 
and  soul  of  a  man  are  strangely  alert  to- 
gether. All  we  ate  for  breakfast  turned  to 
hot  ashes  in  our  hearts  at  eleven  o'clock.  I 
sing  of  the  body  and  of  the  eternal  soul, 
revived  again!  To  feel  life  actually  throb- 
bing back  into  one's  veins,  life  immense  in 
passion,  pulse  and  power,  is  not  over-eating. 

Tilly  has  brought  us  knives,  and  no  forks. 
It  would  have  been  more  appropriate  if  we 
had  eaten  from  the  ends  of  swords.  We  are 
finally  recuperated  from  the  fevers  of  the 


112  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

morning  and  almost  strong  enough  for  the 
long,  long  afternoon  fight  with  the  sun. 
Fresh  water  is  poured  from  a  big  glittering 
can  into  the  jugs  we  have  sucked  dry.  Tilly 
reloads  the  buggy  and  is  gone.  After  an- 
other sizzling  douse  of  water  without  and 
within,  our  long  afternoon  pull  commences. 
The  sun  has  become  like  a  roaring  lion, 
and  we  wrestle  with  the  sheaves  as  though 
we  had  him  by  the  beard.  The  only  thing 
that  keeps  up  my  nerve  in  the  dizziness  is 
the  remembrance  of  the  old  Mennonite's 
proverb  at  breakfast  that  as  long  as  a  man 
can  eat  and  sweat  he  is  safe.  My  hands  in- 
side my  prickling  gloves  seem  burning  off. 
The  wheat  beards  there  are  like  red-hot 
needles.  But  I  am  still  sweating  a  little  in 
the  chest,  and  the  Mennonite  boy  is  cheer- 
fully singing: 

"When  I  behold  the  wondrous  cross 
On  which  the  Prince  of  Glory  died, 
My  richest  gain  I  count  but  loss 
And  pour  contempt  on  all  my  pride." 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      113 

Two-thirds  round  the  field,  methinks  the  jig 
is  up.  Then  the  sun  is  hidden  by  a  friend  of 
ours  in  the  sky,  just  the  tiniest  sort  of  a 
cloud  and  we  march  on  down  the  rows.  The 
merciful  little  whiff  of  dream  follows  the 
sun  for  half  an  hour. 

The  most  terrible  heat  is  at  half -past  two. 
Somehow  we  pull  through  till  four  o'clock. 
Then  we  say  to  ourselves:  "We  can  stand 
this  four-o'clock  heat,  because  we  have  stood 
it  hotter." 

'Tis  a  grim  matter  of  comparison.  We 
speed  up  a  little  and  trot  a  little  as  the  sun 
reaches  the  top  of  the  western  hedge.  A  bit 
later  the  religious  hired  man  walks  home  to 
do  the  chores.  I  sing  down  the  rows  by 
myself.  It  is  glorious  to  work  now.  The 
endless  reiterations  of  the  day  have  devel- 
oped a  certain  dancing  rhythm  in  one's 
nerves,  one  is  intoxicated  with  his  own  weari- 
ness and  the  conceit  that  comes  with  seizing 
the  sun  by  the  mane,  like  Sampson. 

It  is  now  that  the  sun  gracefully  acknowl- 


114  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

edges  his  defeat.  He  shows  through  the 
hedge  as  a  great  blur,  that  is  all.  Then  he 
becomes  a  mist-wrapped  golden  mountain 
that  some  fairy  traveller  might  climb  in  en- 
chanted shoes.  This  sun  of  ours  is  no  longer 
an  enemy,  but  a  fantasy,  a  vision  and  a 
dream. 

Now  the  elderly  proprietor  is  back  on  his 
dancing  pony.  He  is  following  the  hurry- 
ing reaper  in  a  sort  of  ceremonial  fashion, 
delighted  to  see  the  wheat  go  down  so  fast. 
At  last  this  particular  field  is  done.  We 
finish  with  a  comic- tragedy.  Some  little 
rabbits  scoot,  panic-stricken,  from  the  last 
few  yards  of  still-standing  grain.  The  old 
gentleman  on  horseback  and  his  son  afoot 
soon  out-manoeuvre  the  lively  creatures.  We 
have  rabbit  for  supper  at  the  sacrifice  of 
considerable  Mennonite  calm. 

It  was  with  open  rejoicing  on  the  part 
of  all  that  we  finished  the  field  nearest  the 
house,  the  last  one,  by  Saturday  noon.  The 
boy  and  I  had  our  own  special  thrill  in  catch- 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      115 

ing  up  with  the  reaper,  which  had  passed  by 
us  so  often  in  our  rounds.  As  the  square 
in  mid-field  grows  smaller  the  reaper  has  to 
turn  oftener,  and  turning  uses  up  much 
more  time  than  at  first  appears. 

The  places  where  the  armies  of  wheat- 
sheaves  are  marshalled  are  magic  places, 
despite  their  sweat  and  dust.  There  is  noth- 
ing small  in  the  panorama.  All  the  lines  of 
the  scene  are  epic.  The  binder-twine  is  in- 
visible, and  has  not  altered  the  eternal  classic 
form  of  the  sheaf.  There  is  a  noble  dignity 
and  ease  in  the  motion  of  a  new  reaper  on  a 
level  field.  A  sturdy  Mennonite  devotee 
marching  with  a  great  bundle  of  wheat  un- 
der each  arm  and  reaching  for  a  third  makes 
a  picture  indeed,  an  essay  on  sunshine  be- 
yond the  brush  of  any  impressionist.  Each 
returning  day  while  riding  to  the  field,  when 
one  has  a  bit  of  time  to  dream,  one  feels 
these  things.  One  feels  also  the  essentially 
partriarchal  character  of  the  harvest.  One 
thinks  of  the  Book  of  Ruth,  and  the  Jewish 


116  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

feasts  of  ingathering.  All  the  new  Testa- 
ment parables  ring  in  one's  ears,  parables  of 
sowing  and  reaping,  of  tares  and  good  grain, 
of  Bread  and  of  Leaven  and  the  story  of 
the  Disciples  plucking  corn.  As  one  looks 
on  the  half-gathered  treasure  he  thinks  on 
the  solemn  words:  "For  the  Bread  of  God 
is  that  which  cometh  down  out  of  Heaven 
and  giveth  life  unto  the  World,"  arid  the 
rest  of  that  sermon  on  the  Bread  of  Life, 
which  has  so  many  meanings. 

This  Sunday  before  breakfast,  I  could 
fully  enter  into  the  daily  prayers,  that  at 
times  had  appeared  merely  quaint  to  me, 
and  in  my  heart  I  said  "Amen"  to  the  special 
thanksgiving  the  patriarch  lifted  up  for  the 
gift  of  the  fruit  of  the  land.  I  was  happy 
indeed  that  I  had  had  the  strength  to  bear 
my  little  part  in  the  harvest  of  a  noble  and 
devout  household,  as  well  as  a  hand  in  the 
feeding  of  the  wide  world. 

What  I,  a  stranger,  have  done  in  this 
place,  thirty  thousand  strangers  are  doing 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      117 

just  a  little  to  the  west.  We  poor  tramps 
are  helping  to  garner  that  which  reestab- 
lishes the  nations.  If  only  for  a  little  while, 
we  have  bent  our  backs  over  the  splendid 
furrows,  to  save  a  shining  gift  that  would 
otherwise  rot,  or  vanish  away. 

THURSDAY  AFTERNOON,  JULY  FOURTH, 
1912.  In  the  shadow  of  a  lonely  windmill 
between  Raymond  and  Ellinwood,  Kansas. 

I  arrived  hot  and  ravenous  at  Raymond 
about  eleven  A.M.  on  this  glorious  Independ- 
ence Day,  having  walked  twelve  miles  fac- 
ing a  strange  wind.  At  first  it  seemed  fairly 
cool,  because  it  travelled  at  the  rate  of  an 
express  train.  But  it  was  really  hot  and 
alkaline,  and  almost  burnt  me  up.  I  had 
had  for  breakfast  a  cooky,  some  raisins  and 
a  piece  of  cheese,  purchased  with  my  book- 
let of  rhymes  at  a  grocery.  By  the  time  I 
reached  Raymond  I  was  fried  and  frantic. 

The  streets  were  deserted.  I  gathered 
from  the  station-master  that  almost  every- 


118  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

one  had  gone  to  the  Dutch  picnic  in  the 
grove  near  Ellinwood.  The  returns  for  the 
Johnson-Flynn  fight  were  to  be  received 
there  beneath  the  trees,  and  a  potent  variety 
of  dry-state  beverage  was  to  flow  free.  The 
unveracious  station-master  declared  this  bev- 
erage was  made  of  equal  parts  iron-rust, 
patent  medicine  and  rough-on-rats,  added 
to  a  barrel  of  brown  rain-water.  He  ap- 
peared to  be  prejudiced  against  it. 

I  walked  down  the  street.  Just  as  I  had 
somehow  anticipated,  I  spied  out  a  certain 
type  of  man.  He  was  alone  in  his  restau- 
rant and  I  crouched  my  soul  to  spring.  The 
only  man  left  in  town  is  apt  to  be  a  soft- 
hearted party.  "Here,  as  sure  as  my  name 
is  tramp,  I  will  wrestle  with  a  defenceless 
fellow-being." 

Like  many  a  restaurant  in  Kansas,  it  was 
a  sort  of  farmhand's  Saturday  night  para- 
dise. If  a  man  cannot  loaf  in  a  saloon  he 
will  loaf  in  a  restaurant.  Then  certain 
problems  of  demand  and  supply  arise  ac- 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      119 

cording  to  circumstances  and  circumlocu- 
tions. 

I  obtained  leave  for  the  ice-water  with- 
out wrestling.  I  almost  emptied  the  tank. 
Then,  with  due  art,  I  offered  to  recite  twenty 
poems  to  the  solitary  man,  a  square  meal  to 
be  furnished  at  the  end,  if  the  rhymes  were 
sufficiently  fascinating. 

Assuming  a  judicial  attitude  on  the  lunch- 
counter  stool  he  put  me  in  the  arm-chair  by 
the  ice-chest  and  told  me  to  unwind  myself. 
As  usual,  I  began  with  The  Proud  Farmer, 
The  Illinois  Village  and  The  Building  of 
Springfield;  which  three  in  series  contain 
my  whole  gospel,  directly  or  by  implication. 
Then  I  wandered  on  through  all  sorts  of 
rhyme.  He  nodded  his  head  like  a  man- 
darin, at  the  end  of  each  recital.  Then  he 
began  to  get  dinner.  He  said  he  liked  my 
poetry,  and  he  was  glad  I  came  in,  for  he 
would  feel  more  like  getting  something  to 
eat  himself.  I  sat  on  and  on  by  the  ice- 
chest  while  he  prepared  a  meal  more  heating 


120  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

than  the  morning  wind  or  the  smell  of  fire- 
crackers in  the  street.  First,  for  each  man, 
a  slice  of  fried  ham  large  enough  for  a 
whole  family.  Then  French  fried  potatoes 
by  the  platterful.  Then  three  fried  eggs 
apiece.  There  was  milk  with  cream  on  top 
to  be  poured  from  a  big  granite  bucket  as 
we  desired  it.  There  was  a  can  of  beans 
with  tomato  sauce.  There  was  sweet  apple- 
butter.  There  were  canned  apples.  There 
was  a  pot  of  coffee.  I  moved  over  from  the 
ice-chest  and  we  talked  and  ate  till  half-past 
one.  I  began  to  feel  that  I  was  solid  as  an 
iron  man  and  big  as  a  Colossus  of  Rhodes. 
I  would  like  to  report  our  talk,  but  this  letter 
must  end  somewhere.  I  agreed  with  my 
host's  opinions  on  everything  but  the  tem- 
perance question.  He  did  not  believe  in 
total  abstinence.  On  that  I  remained  non- 
committal. Eating  as  I  had,  how  could  I 
take  a  stand  against  my  benefactor  even 
though  the  issue  were  the  immortal  one  of 
man's  sinful  weakness  for  drink?  The  ham 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      121 

and  ice  water  were  going  to  my  head  as  it 
was.  And  I  could  have  eaten  more.  I  could 
have  eaten  a  fat  Shetland  pony. 

My  host  explained  that  he  also  travelled 
at  times,  but  did  not  carry  poetry.  He  gave 
me  much  box-car  learning.  Then,  curious 
to  relate,  he  dug  out  maps  and  papers,  and 
showed  me  how  to  take  up  a  claim  in  Ore- 
gon, a  thing  I  did  not  in  the  least  desire  to 
do.  God  bless  him  in  basket  and  in  store, 
afoot  or  at  home. 

This  afternoon  the  ham  kept  on  frying 
within  me,  not  uncomfortably.  I  stopped 
and  drank  at  every  windmill.  Now  it  is 
about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  and  I 
am  in  the  shadow  of  one  more.  I  have  found 
a  bottle  which  just  fits  my  hip  pocket  which 
I  have  washed  and  will  use  as  a  canteen 
henceforth.  When  one  knows  he  has  his 
drink  with  him,  he  does  not  get  so  thirsty. 

But  I  have  put  down  little  to  show  you 
the  strange  intoxication  that  has  pervaded 
this  whole  day.  The  inebriating  character 


122  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

of  the  air  and  the  water  and  the  intoxication 
that  comes  with  the  very  sight  of  the  wind- 
mills spinning  alone,  and  the  elation  that 
comes  with  the  companionship  of  the  sun, 
and  the  gentleness  of  the  occasional  good 
Samaritans,  are  not  easily  conveyed  in  words. 
When  one's  spirit  is  just  right  for  this  sort 
of  thing  it  all  makes  as  good  an  Independ- 
ence Day  as  folks  are  having  anywhere  in 
this  United  States,  even  at  Ellinwood. 

THURSDAY,  JULY  5,  1912.  In  the  office 
of  the  Ellinwood  livery  stable  in  the  morn- 
ing. 

Everyone  came  home  drunk  from  the 
Dutch  picnic  last  night.  Ellinwood  roared 
and  Ellinwood  snorted.  I  reached  the  place 
from  the  east  just  as  the  noisy  revellers  ar- 
rived from  the  south. 

Ellinwood  is  an  old  German  town  full  of 
bar-rooms,  forced  by  the  sentiment  of  the 
dry  voters  in  surrounding  territory  to  turn 
into  restaurants,  but  only  of  late.  The  bar- 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      123 

fixtures  are  defiantly  retained.  Ever  and 
anon  Ellin  wood  takes  to  the  woods  with 
malicious  intent. 

Many  of  the  citizens  were  in  a  mad-dog 
fury  because  Flynn  had  not  licked  Johnson. 
This  town  seems  to  be  of  the  opinion  that 
that  battle  was  important.  The  proprietor 
of  the  most  fashionable  hotel  monopolized 
the  'phone  on  his  return  from  the  woods. 
He  called  up  everybody  in  town.  His  con- 
versation was  always  the  same.  "What'd 
ya  think  of  the  fight?"  And  without  wait- 
ing for  answer:  "I'll  bet  one  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  that  Flynn  can  lick  Johnson  in 
a  fair  fight.  It's  a  disgrace  to  this  nation 
that  black  rascal  kin  lay  hands  on  a  white 
man.  I'll  bet  a  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
.  .  .  A  hundred  thousand  dollars  .  .," 
etc. 

I  sat  a  long  time  waiting  for  him  to  get 
through.  At  last  I  put  in  my  petition  at 
another  hostelrie.  This  host  was  intoxicated, 
but  gentle.  In  exchange  for  what  I  call  the 


124  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

squarest  kind  of  a  meal  I  recited  the  most 
cooling  verses  I  knew  to  a  somewhat  dis- 
tracted, rather  alcoholic  company  of  harvest 
hands.  First  I  recited  a  poem  in  praise  of 
Lincoln  and  then  one  in  praise  of  the  up- 
lifting influence  of  the  village  church.  Then, 
amid  qualified  applause,  I  distributed  my 
tracts,  and  retreated  to  this  stable  for  the 
night. 

KANSAS 

Of  I  have  walked  in  Kansas 
Through  many  a  harvest  -field 
And  piled  the  sheaves  of  glory  there 
And  down  the  wild  rows  reeled: 

Each  sheaf  a  little  yellow  sun, 
A   heap  of  hot-rayed  gold; 
Each   binder   like    Creation's   hand 
To  mould  suns,  as  of  old. 

Straight  overhead  the  orb  of  noon 
Beat  down  with  brimstone  breath: 
The  desert  wind  from  south  and  west 
Was  blistering  flame   and  death. 


THE    FIRST    HARVEST      125 

Yet  it  was  gay  in  Kansas, 
A-fighting  that  strong  sun; 
And  I  and  many  a  fellow-tramp 
Defied  that  wind  and  won. 

And  we  felt  free  in  Kansas 
From  any  sort  of  fear, 
For  thirty  thousand  tramps  like  us 
There  harvest  every  year. 

She  stretches  arms  for  them  to  come, 

She  roars  for  helpers  then, 

And  so  it  is  in  Kansas 

That  tramps,  one  month,  are  men. 

We  sang  in  burning  Kansas 
The  songs  of  Sabbath-school, 
The  "Day  Star"  flashing  in  the  East, 
The  "Vale  of  Eden"  cool. 

We  sang  in  splendid  Kansas 
"The  flag   that   set  us  free" — 
That  march  of  fifty  thousand  men 
With,  Sherman  to  the  sea. 

We   feasted   high   in   Kansas 
And  had  much  milk  and  meat. 
The  tables  groaned  to  give  us  power 
Wherewith  to  save  the  wheat. 


126  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Our  beds  were  sweet  alfalfa  hay 
Within  the  barn-loft  wide. 
The    loft  doors   opened  out  upon 
The  endless  wheat-field  tide. 

I  loved  to  watch  the  wind-mills  spin 
And  watch  that  big  moon  rise. 
I  dreamed  and  dreamed  with  lids  half-shut, 
The  moonlight  in  my  eyes. 

For  all  men  dream  in  Kansas 
By  noonday  and  by  night, 
By  sunrise  yellow ,  red  and  wild 
And  moonrise  wild  and  white. 

The  wind  would  drive  the  glittering  clouds. 
The  cottonwoods  would  croon, 
And  past  the  sheaves  and  through  the  leaves 
Came  whispers  from  the  moon. 


In  Kansas:  the  Second  and  Third  Harvest 

'"pWO  miles  north  of  Great  Bend.  In 
the  heart  of  the  greatest  wheat  country 
in  America,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  harvest- 
time,  Sunday,  July  7,  1912. 

I  am  meditating  on  the  ways  of  Destiny. 
It  seems  to  me  I  am  here,  not  altogether  by 
chance.  But  just  why  I  am  here,  time  must 
reveal. 

Last  Friday  I  had  walked  the  ten  miles 
from  Ellinwood  to  Great  Bend  by  9  A.M. 
I  went  straight  to  the  general  delivery,  where 
a  package  of  tracts  and  two  or  three  weeks' 
mail  awraited  me.  I  read  about  half  through 
the  letter-pile  as  I  sat  on  a  rickety  bench  in 
the  public  square.  Some  very  loud-mouthed 
negroes  were  playing  horse-shoe  obstreper- 

127 


128  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

ously.  I  began  to  wish  Flynn  had  whipped 
Johnson.  I  was  thinking  of  getting  away 
from  there,  when  two  white  men,  evidently 
harvesters,  sat  down  near  me  and  diluted  the 
color  scheme. 

One  man  said:  "Harvest- wages  this  week 
are  from  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents  up  to 
four  dollars.  We  are  experienced  men  and 
worth  three  dollars  and  fifty  cents."  Then 
a  German  farmer  came  and  negotiated  with 
them  in  vain.  He  wanted  to  hold  them  down 
to  three  dollars  apiece.  He  had  his  auto- 
mobile to  take  his  crew  away  that  morning. 

Then  a  fellow  in  citified  clothes  came  to 
me  and  asked:  "Can  you  follow  a  reaper 
and  shock?"  I  said:  "Show  me  the  wheat/' 
So  far  as  I  remember,  it  is  the  first  time  in 
my  life  anyone  ever  hunted  me  out  and  asked 
me  to  work  for  him.  He  put  me  into  his 
buggy  and  drove  me  about  two  miles  north 
to  this  place,  just  the  region  John  Hum- 
phrey told  me  to  find,  though  he  did  not 
specify  this  farm.  I  was  offered  $2.50  and 


THE    SECOND    HARVEST    129 

keep,  as  the  prophet  foretold.  The  man 
who  drove  me  out  has  put  his  place  this  year 
into  the  hands  of  a  tenant  who  is  my  direct 
boss.  I  may  not  be  able  to  last  out,  but  all 
is  well  so  far.  I  have  made  an  acceptable 
hand,  keeping  up  with  the  reaper  by  myself, 
and  I  feel  something  especial  awaits  me. 
But  the  reaper  breaks  down  so  often  I  do 
not  know  whether  I  can  keep  up  with  it 
without  help  when  it  begins  going  full-speed. 

These  people  do  not  attend  church  like 
the  Mennonites.  The  tenant  wanted  me  to 
break  the  Sabbath  and  help  him  in  the  al- 
falfa to-day.  He  suggested  that  neither  he 
nor  I  was  so  narrow-minded  or  superstitious 
as  to  be  a  "Sunday  man."  Besides  he 
couldn't  work  the  alfalfa  at  all  without  one 
more  hand.  I  did  not  tell  him  so,  but  I  felt 
I  needed  all  Sunday  to  catch  up  on  my 
tiredness.  I  suspect  that  my  refusal  to  vio- 
late the  Sabbath  vexed  him. 

There  has  been  a  terrible  row  of  some  kind 
going  on  behind  the  barn  all  afternoon. 


130   THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Maybe  he  is  working  off  his  vexation.  At 
last  the  tenant's  wife  has  gone  out  to  "see 
about  that  racket."  Now  she  comes  in. 
She  tells  me  they  have  been  trying  to  break 
a  horse. 

The  same  farm,  two  miles  north  of  Great 
Bend,  July  8,  1912. 

How  many  times  in  the  counties  further 
back  I  have  asked  with  fear  and  misgiving 
for  permission  to  work  in  the  alfalfa,  and 
have  been  repulsed  when  I  confessed  to  the 
lack  of  experience!  And  now  this  morning 
I  have  pitched  alfalfa  hay  with  the  best  of 
them.  We  had  to  go  to  work  early  while 
the  dew  softened  the  leaves.  It  is  a  kind 
of  clover.  Once  perfectly  dry,  the  leaves 
crumble  off  when  the  hay  is  shaken.  Then 
we  must  quit.  The  leaves  are  the  nourish- 
ing part. 

The  owner  of  the  place,  the  citified  party 
who  drove  me  out  here  the  other  day  and 
who  is  generally  back  in  town,  was  on  top 


THE    SECOND    HARVEST   131 

of  that  stack  this  morning,  his  collar  off, 
his  town  shirt  and  pants  somewhat  the  worse 
for  the  exertion.  He  puffed  like  a  porpoise, 
for  he  was  putting  in  place  all  the  hay  we 
men- handed  up  to  him.  We  lifted  the  al- 
falfa in  a  long  bundle,  using  our  three  forks 
at  one  time.  We  worked  like  drilled  sol- 
diers, then  went  in  to  early  dinner. 

This  is  a  short  note  written  while  the 
binder  takes  the  necessary  three  turns  round 
the  new  wheatfield  that  the  tenant's  brother 
and  I  are  starting  to  conquer  this  afternoon. 
Three  swaths  of  four  bundles  each  must  be 
cut,  then  I  will  start  on  my  rounds,  piling 
them  into  shocks  of  twelve  bundles  each. 

I  am  right  by  the  R.  F.  D.  box  that  goes 
with  this  farm.  I  will  put  up  the  little  tin 
flag  that  signals  the  postman.  One  of  the 
four  beasts  hitched  to  the  reaper  is  a  broncho 
colt  who  came  dancing  to  the  field  this  after- 
noon, refusing  to  keep  his  head  in  line  with 
the  rest  of  the  steeds,  and,  as  a  consequence, 
pulling  the  whole  reaper.  It  transpires  that 


132  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

the  row  in  the  horselot  Sunday  was  caused 
by  this  colt.  He  jumped  up  and  left  his 
hoof -print  on  the  chest  of  the  man  now  driv- 
ing him.  So  the  two  men  tied  him  up  and 
beat  him  all  afternoon  with  a  double-tree, 
cursing  him  between  whacks,  lashing  them- 
selves with  Kansas  whisky  to  keep  up  steam. 
Yet  he  comes  dancing  to  the  field. 

On  the  farm  two  miles  north  of  Great 
Bend,  Wednesday  evening,  July  10,  1912. 

I  must  write  you  a  short  note  to-night 
while  the  rest  are  getting  ready  for  supper. 
I  will  try  to  mail  it  to-morrow  morning  on 
the  way  to  the  wheat.  Let  me  assure  you 
that  your  letter  will  be  heeded.  I  know 
pretty  well,  by  this  time,  what  I  can  stand, 
but  if  I  feel  the  least  bit  unfit  I  will  not  go 
into  the  sun.  That  is  my  understanding 
with  the  tenant  who  runs  the  farm.  I  can 
eat  and  sweat  like  a  Mennonite.  I  sleep  like 
a  top  and  wake  up  fresh  as  a  little  daisy. 
So  far  I  have  gone  dancing  to  the  field  as 


THE    SECOND    HARVEST    133 

the  broncho  did.  But  the  broncho  is  a  poor 
illustration.  He  is  dead. 

The  broncho  was  the  property  of  a  little 
boy,  the  son  of  the  man  who  owns  the  farm. 
The  little  boy  had  started  with  a  lamb  and 
raised  it,  then  sold  it  for  chickens,  increas- 
ing his  capital  by  trading  and  feeding  till 
it  was  all  concentrated  to  buy  this  colt.  Then 
he  and  his  people  moved  to  town  and  left 
the  colt,  just  at  the  breaking  age,  to  be 
trained  for  a  boy's  pet  by  these  men.  Since 
he  became  obstreperous,  they  thought  hitch- 
ing him  to  the  reaper  would  cure  him,  leav- 
ing a  draught-horse  in  the  barn  to  make 
place  for  the  unruly  one. 

The  tenant's  brother,  who  drove  the  reap- 
er, sent  word  to  the  little  boy  he  had  not  the 
least  idea  what  ailed  Dick.  He  hinted  to 
me  later  that  whatever  killed  him  must  have 
come  from  some  disease  in  his  head. 

Yes,  it  came  from  his  head.  That  double- 
tree and  that  pitchfork  handle  probably 
missed  his  ribs  once  or  twice  and  hit  him 


134  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

somewhere  around  his  eyes,  in  the  course  of 
the  Sabbath  afternoon  services.  Two  whis- 
ky-lashed colt-breakers  can  do  wonders  with- 
out trying.  I  have  been  assured  that  this  is 
the  only  way  to  subdue  the  beasts,  that  law 
and  order  must  assert  themselves  or  the 
whole  barnyard  will  lead  an  industrial  re- 
bellion. It  is  past  supper  now.  I  have  been 
writing  till  the  lamp  is  dim.  I  must  go  to 
my  quilts  in  the  hay. 

To-day  was  the  only  time  the  reaper  did 
not  break  down  every  half  hour  for  repairs. 
So  it  was  one  continuous  dance  for  me  and 
my  friend  the  broncho  till  about  three  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  when  the  sun  really  did  its 
best.  Then  the  broncho  went  crazy.  He 
shoved  his  head  over  the  backs  of  two  mules 
twice  his  size,  and  almost  pushed  them  into 
the  teeth  of  the  sickle. 

He  was  bleeding  at  the  mouth  and  his 
eyes  almost  popped  out  of  his  head.  He  had 
hardly  an  inch  of  hide  that  was  whole,  and 
his  raw  places  were  completely  covered  with 


THE    SECOND    HARVEST     135 

Kansas  flies.  And  the  hot  winds  have  made 
the  flies  so  ravenous  they  draw  blood  from 
the  back  of  the  harvester's  hand  the  moment 
they  alight. 

The  broncho  began  to  kick  in  all  four 
directions  at  once.  He  did  one  good  thing. 
He  pulled  the  callouses  off  the  hands  of  the 
tenant's  brother,  the  driver,  who  still  gripped 
the  lines  but  surrendered  his  pride  and 
yelled  for  me  to  help.  I  am  as  afraid  of 
bronchos  and  mules  as  I  am  of  buzz  saws. 
Yet  we  separated  the  beasts  somehow,  the 
mules  safely  hitched  to  the  fence,  the  broncho 
between  us,  held  by  two  halter-ropes. 

There  was  no  reasoning  with  Dick.  He 
was  dying,  and  dying  game.  One  of  the 
small  boys  appeared  just  then  and  carried 
the  alarm.  Soon  a  more  savage  and  in- 
domitable man  with  a  more  eloquent  tongue, 
the  tenant  himself,  had  my  end  of  the  rope. 
But  not  the  most  formidable  cursing  could 
stop  Dick  from  bleeding  at  the  mouth. 
Later  the  draught  horse  whose  place  he  had 


136  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

taken  was  brought  over  from  his  pleasant 
rest  in  the  barn  and  the  two  were  tied  head 
to  head.  The  lordly  tenant  started  to  lead 
them  toward  home.  But  Dick  fell  down 
and  died  as  soon  as  he  reached  a  patch  of 
unploughed  prairie  grass,  which,  I  think, 
was  the  proper  end  for  him.  The  peaceful 
draught  horse  was  put  in  his  place. 

The  reaper  went  back  to  work.  The 
reaper  cut  splendidly  the  rest  of  this  after- 
noon. As  for  me  I  never  shocked  wheat  with 
such  machine-like  precision.  I  went  at  a  dog- 
trot part  of  the  time,  and  almost  caught 
up  with  the  machine. 

The  broncho  should  not  have  been  called 
Dick.  He  should  have  been  called  Daniel 
Boone,  or  Davy  Crockett  or  Custer  or  Rich- 
ard, yes,  Richard  the  Lion-Hearted.  He 
came  dancing  to  the  field  this  morning,  be- 
tween the  enormous  overshadowing  mules, 
and  dancing  feebly  this  noon.  He  pulled 
the  whole  reaper  till  three  o'clock.  I  remem- 
ber I  asked  the  driver  at  noon  what  made 


THE    SECOND    HARVEST   137 

the  broncho  dance.  He  answered:  "The 
flies  on  his  ribs,  I  suppose." 

I  fancy  Dick  danced  because  he  was  made 
to  die  dancing,  just  as  the  Spartans  rejoiced 
and  combed  their  long  hair  preparing  to 
face  certain  death  at  Thermopylae. 

I  think  I  want  on  my  coat  of  arms  a 
broncho,  rampant. 

THURSDAY,  JULY  11,  1912.  Great  Bend, 
Kansas. 

Yesterday  I  could  lift  three  moderate- 
sized  sheaves  on  the  run.  This  morning  I 
could  hardly  lift  one,  walking.  This  noon 
the  foreman  of  the  ranch,  the  man  who,  with 
his  brother,  disciplined  the  broncho,  was  furi- 
ously angry  with  me,  because,  as  I  plainly 
explained,  I  was  getting  too  much  sun  and 
wanted  a  bit  of  a  rest.  He  inquired,  "Why 
didn't  you  tell  me  two  days  ago  you  were 
going  to  be  overcome  by  the  heat,  so  I  could 
have  had  a  man  ready  to  take  your  place?" 
Also,  "It's  no  wonder  dirty  homeless  men 


138  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

are  walking  around  the  country  looking  for 
jobs."  Also,  a  little  later:  "I  have  my  opin- 
ion of  any  man  on  earth  who  is  a  quitter." 

But  I  kept  my  serenity  and  told  him  that 
under  certain  circumstances  I  was  apt  to  be 
a  quitter,  though,  of  course,  I  did  not  like 
to  overdo  the  quitting  business.  I  remained 
unruffled,  as  I  say,  and  handed  him  and  his 
brother  copies  of  The  Gospel  of  Beauty 
and  Rhymes  to  Be  Traded  for  Bread  and 
bade  them  good-bye.  Then  I  went  to  town 
and  told  the  local  editor  on  them  for  their 
horse-killing,  which,  I  suppose,  was  two- 
faced  of  me. 

The  tenant's  attitude  was  perfectly  ab- 
surd. Hands  are  terribly  scarce.  A  half 
day's  delay  in  shocking  that  wheat  would  not 
have  hurt  it,  or  stopped  the  reaper,  or  al- 
tered any  of  the  rest  of  the  farm  routine. 
He  fired  me  without  real  hope  of  a  substi- 
tute. I  was  working  for  rock-bottom  wages 
and  willing  to  have  them  docked  all  he 


THE    SECOND    HARVEST    139 

pleased  if  he  would  only  give  me  six  hours 
to  catch  up  in  my  tiredness. 

Anyway,  here  I  am  in  the  Saddlerock 
Hotel,  to  which  I  have  paid  in  advance  a  bit 
of  my  wages,  in  exchange  for  one  night's 
rest.  I  enclose  the  rest  to  you.  I  will  start 
out  on  the  road  to-morrow,  bathed,  clean, 
dead  broke  and  fancy  free.  I  have  made 
an  effort  to  graduate  from  beggary  into  the 
respectable  laboring  class,  which  you  have 
so  often  exhorted  me  to  do. 

I  shall  try  for  employment  again,  as  soon 
as  I  rest  up  a  bit.  I  enjoyed  the  wheat  and 
the  second-hand  reaper,  and  the  quaintness 
of  my  employers  and  all  till  the  death  of 
Richard  the  Lion-Hearted. 

I  am  wondering  whether  I  ought  to  be 
as  bitter  as  I  am  against  the  horse-killers. 
We  cannot  have  green  fields  just  for  bron- 
chos to  gambol  in,  or  roads  where  they  can 
trot  unharnessed  and  nibble  by  the  way.  We 
must  have  Law  and  Order  and  Discipline. 

But,  thanks  to  the  Good  St.  Francis  who 


140  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

marks  out  my  path  for  me,  I  start  to-mor- 
row morning  to  trot  unharnessed  once  again. 

SUNDAY,,  JULY  14,  1912.  In  front  of  the 
general  store  at  Wright,  Kansas,  which 
same  is  as  small  as  a  town  can  get. 

I  have  been  wondering  why  Destiny  sent 
me  to  that  farm  where  the  horse-killers  flour- 
ished. I  suppose  it  was  that  Dick  might 
have  at  least  one  mourner.  All  the  world's 
heroes  are  heroes  because  they  had  the  quali- 
ties of  constancy  and  dancing  gameness  that 
brought  him  to  his  death. 

Some  day  I  shall  hunt  up  the  right  kind 
of  a  Hindu  and  pay  him  filthy  gold  and 
have  him  send  the  ghost  of  Dick  to  those 
wretched  men.  They  will  be  unable  to  move, 
lying  with  eyes  a-staring  all  night  long. 
Dreadful  things  will  happen  in  that  room, 
dreadful  things  the  Hindu  shall  devise  after 
I  have  told  him  what  the  broncho  endured. 
They  shall  wake  in  the  morning,  thinking  it 
all  a  dream  till  they  behold  the  horse-shoe 


THE    THIRD    HARVEST     141 

prints  all  over  the  counterpane.  Then  they 
will  try  to  sit  up  and  find  that  their  ribs  are 
broken — well,  I  will  leave  it  to  the  Hindu. 
I  have  been  waiting  many  hours  at  this 
town  of  Wright.  To-day  and  yesterday  I 
made  seventy-six  miles.  Thirty-five  of  these 
miles  I  made  yesterday  in  the  automobile  of 
the  genial  and  scholarly  Father  A.  P.  Hei- 
mann  of  Kinsley,  who  took  me  as  far  as 
that  point.  I  have  been  loafing  here  at 
Wright  since  about  four  in  the  afternoon. 
It  is  nearly  dark  now.  Dozens  of  harvest- 
ers, already  engaged  for  the  week,  have  been 
hanging  about  and  the  two  stores  have  kept 
open  to  accommodate  them.  There  is  a  man 
to  meet  me  here  at  eight  o'clock.  I  may 
harvest  for  him  four  days.  I  told  him  I 
would  not  promise  for  longer.  He  has 
taken  the  train  to  a  station  further  east  to 
try  to  get  some  men  for  all  week.  If  he 
does  not  return  with  a  full  quota  he  will 
take  me  on.  While  I  am  perfectly  willing 


142  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

to  work  for  two  dollars  and  a  half,  many 
hold  out  for  three. 

The  man  I  am  waiting  for  overtook  me 
two  miles  east  of  this  place.  He  was  hurry- 
ing to  catch  his  train.  He  took  me  into  his 
rig  and  made  the  bargain.  He  turned  his 
horse  over  to  me  and  raced  for  the  last  car 
as  we  neared  the  station.  So  here  I  am  a 
few  yards  from  the  depot,  in  front  of  the 
general  store,  watching  the  horse  of  an  utter 
stranger.  Of  course  the  horse  isn't  worth 
stealing,  and  his  harness  is  half  twine  and 
wire.  But  the  whole  episode  is  so  careless 
and  free  and  Kansas-like. 

Most  of  the  crowd  have  gone,  and  I  am 
awfully  hungry.  I  might  steal  off  the  har- 
ness in  the  dark,  and  eat  it.  Somehow  I 
have  not  quite  the  nerve  to  beg  where  I  ex- 
pect to  harvest.  I  am  afraid  to  try  again 
in  this  fight  with  the  sun,  yet  when  a  man 
overtakes  me  in  the  road  and  trusts  me  with 
his  best  steed  and  urges  me  to  work  for  him, 
I  hardly  know  how  to  refuse. 


THE    THIRD    HARVEST     143 

SUNDAY  AFTERNOON,,  JULY  21,  1912. 
Loafing  and  dozing  on  my  bed  in  the  gran- 
ary on  the  farm  near  Wright,  Kansas,  where 
I  have  been  harvesting  a  full  week. 

The  man  I  waited  for  last  Sunday  after- 
noon returned  with  his  full  quota  of  hands 
on  the  "Plug"  train  about  nine  o'clock. 
Where  was  I  to  sleep?  I  began  to  think 
about  a  lumber  pile  I  had  seen,  when  I  dis- 
covered that  five  other  farmers  had  climbed 
off  that  train.  They  were  poking  around  in 
all  the  dark  corners  for  men  just  like  me. 
I  engaged  with  a  German  named  Louis  Lix 
for  the  whole  week,  all  the  time  shaking  with 
misgivings  from  the  memory  of  my  last 
break-down.  Here  it  is,  Sunday,  before  I 
know  it.  Lix  wants  me  back  again  next 
year,  and  is  sorry  I  will  not  work  longer. 
I  have  totalled  about  sixteen  days  of  harvest- 
ing in  Kansas,  and  though  I  sagged  in  the 
middle  I  think  I  have  ended  in  fair  style. 
Enclosed  find  all  my  wages  except  enough 
for  one  day's  stay  at  Dodge  City  and  three 


144  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

real  hotel  meals  there — sherbet  and  cheese 
and  crackers,  and  finger  bowls  at  the  end, 
and  all  such  folly.  Harvest  eating  is  grand 
in  its  way  but  somehow  lacks  frills.  Ah, 
if  eating  were  as  much  in  my  letters  as  in 
my  thoughts,  this  would  be  nothing  but  a 
series  of  menus! 

I  have  helped  Lix  harvest  barley,  oats  and 
wheat,  mainly  wheat.  This  is  the  world  of 
wheat.  In  this  genial  region  one  can  stand 
on  a  soap-box  and  see  nothing  else  to  the 
horizon.  Walking  the  Santa  Fe  Trail  be- 
side the  railroad  means  walking  till  the 
enormous  wheat-elevator  behind  one  disap- 
pears because  of  the  curvature  of  the  earth, 
like  the  ships  in  the  geography  picture,  and 
walking  on  and  on  till  finally  in  the  west  the 
top  of  another  elevator  appears,  being  grad- 
ually revealed  because  this  earth  is  not  flat 
like  a  table,  but,  as  the  geography  says, 
curved  like  an  apple  or  an  orange. 

In  these  fields,  instead  of  working  a 
reaper  with  a  sickle  eight  feet  long,  they 


THE    THIRD    HARVEST     145 

work  a  header  with  a  twelve-foot  sickle.  In- 
stead of  four  horses  to  this  machine,  there 
are  six.  Instead  of  one  man  or  two  follow- 
ing behind  to  the  left  of  the  driver  to  pile 
sheaves  into  shocks,  a  barge,  a  most  copious 
slatted  receptacle,  drives  right  beside  the 
header,  catching  the  unbound  wheat  which 
is  thrown  up  loosely  by  the  machine.  One 
pitchfork  man  in  the  barge  spreads  this  cat- 
aract of  headed  wheat  so  a  full  load  can  be 
taken  in.  His  partner  guides  the  team, 
keeping  precisely  with  the  header. 

But  these  two  bargemen  do  not  complete 
the  outfit.  Two  others  with  their  barge  or 
"header-box"  come  up  behind  as  soon  as  the 
first  box  starts  over  to  the  stack  to  be  un- 
loaded. Here  the  sixth  man,  the  stacker, 
receives  it,  and  piles  it  into  a  small  moun- 
tain nicely  calculated  to  resist  cyclones.  The 
green  men  are  broken  in  as  bargemen.  The 
stacker  is  generally  an  old  hand. 

Unloading  the  wheat  is  the  hardest  part 
of  the  bargeman's  work.  His  fork  must 


146  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

be  full  and  he  must  be  fast.  Otherwise  his 
partner,  who  takes  turns  driving  and  fill- 
ing, and  who  helps  to  pitch  the  wheat  out, 
will  have  more  than  half  the  pitching  to  do. 
And  all  the  time  will  be  used  up.  Neither 
man  will  have  a  rest-period  while  waiting 
for  the  other  barge  to  come  up.  This  rest- 
period  is  the  thing  toward  which  we  all 
wrestle.  If  we  save  it  out  we  drink  from 
the  water- jugs  in  the  corner  of  the  wagon. 
We  examine  where  the  grasshoppers  have 
actually  bitten  little  nicks  out  of  our  pitch- 
fork handles,  nicks  that  are  apt  to  make 
blisters.  We  tell  our  adventures  and,  when 
the  header  breaks  down,  and  must  be 
tinkered  endlessly,  and  we  have  a  grand 
rest,  the  stacker  sings  a  list  of  the  most 
amazing  cowboy  songs.  He  is  a  young  man, 
yet  rode  the  range  here  for  seven  years  be- 
fore it  became  wheat-country.  One  day 
when  the  songs  had  become  hopelessly, 
prosaically  pornographic  I  yearned  for  a 


THE    THIRD    HARVEST     147 

change.     I  quoted  the  first  stanza  of  Ata- 
lanta's  chorus: 

"When  the  hounds  of  Spring  are  on  Winter's  traces, 
The  mother  of  months,  in  meadow  or  plain, 
Fills  the  shadows  and  windy  places 
With  lisp  of  leaves  and  ripple  of  rain " 

The  stacker  asked  for  more.  I  finished 
the  chorus.  Then  I  repeated  it  several  times, 
while  the  header  was  being  mended.  We 
had  to  get  to  work.  The  next  morning  when 
my  friend  climbed  into  our  barge  to  ride 
to  the  field  he  began: 

"  'When  the  hounds  of  Spring  are  on  Winter's  traces, 
The  mother  of  months,  in  meadow  or  plain, 
Fills  the  shadows ' 

"Dammit,  what's  the  rest  of  it?    I've  been 
trying  to  recite  that  piece  all  night." 

Now  he  has  the  first  four  stanzas.  And 
last  evening  he  left  for  Dodge  City  to  stay 
overnight  and  Sunday.  He  was  resolved  to 
purchase  Atalanta  in  Calydon  and  find  in 


148  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

the  Public  Library  The  Lady  of  Shallot  and 
The  Blessed  Damozel,  besides  paying  the 
usual  visit  to  his  wife  and  children. 

Working  in  a  header-barge  is  fun,  more 
fun  than  shocking  wheat,  even  when  one  is 
working  for  a  Mennonite  boss.  The  crew 
is  larger.  There  is  occasional  leisure  to  be 
social.  There  is  more  cool  wrind,  for  one 
is  higher  in  the  air.  There  is  variety  in  the 
work.  One  drives  about  a  third  of  the  time, 
guides  the  wheat  into  the  header  a  third  of 
the  time  and  empties  the  barge  a  third  of 
the  time.  The  emptying  was  the  back- 
breaking  work. 

And  I  was  all  the  while  fearful,  lest,  from 
plain  awkwardness,  or  shaking  from  weari- 
ness, I  should  stick  some  man  in  the  eye  with 
my  pitchfork.  But  I  did  not.  I  came 
nearer  to  being  a  real  harvester  every  day. 
The  last  two  days  my  hands  were  so  hard 
I  could  work  without  gloves,  this  despite  the 
way  the  grasshoppers  had  chewed  the  fork- 
handle. 


THE    THIRD    HARVEST     149 

Believe  everything  you  have  ever  heard  of 
the  Kansas  grasshoppers. 

The  heights  of  the  header-barge  are 
dramatically  commanding.  Kansas  appears 
much  larger  than  when  we  are  merely  stand- 
ing in  the  field.  We  are  just  as  high  as 
upon  a  mountain-peak,  for  here,  as  there, 
we  can  see  to  the  very  edges  of  the  eternities. 

Now  let  me  tell  you  of  a  new  kind  of 
weather. 

Clouds  thicken  overhead.  The  wind  turns 
suddenly  cold.  We  shiver  while  we  work. 
We  are  liable  in  five  minutes  to  a  hailstorm, 
a  terrific  cloudburst  or  a  cyclone.  The 
horses  are  unhitched.  The  barges  are  tied 
end  to  end.  And  still  the  barges  may  be 
blown  away.  They  must  be  anchored  even 
more  safely.  The  long  poles  to  lock  the 
wheels  are  thrust  under  the  bed  through  the 
spokes.  It  has  actually  been  my  duty  to  put 
this  pole  in  the  wheels  every  evening  to  keep 
the  barges  from  being  blown  out  of  the 
barn-lot  at  night.  Such  is  the  accustomed 


150  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

weather  excitement  in  Kansas.  Just  now 
we  have  excitement  that  is  unusual.  But 
as  the  storm  is  upon  us  it  splits  and  passes 
to  the  north  and  south.  There  is  not  a  drop 
of  rain. 

We  are  at  work  again  in  ten  minutes.  In 
two  hours  the  sky  is  clear  and  the  air  is  hot 
and  alkaline.  And  ten  thousand  grasshop- 
pers are  glad  to  see  that  good  old  hot  wind 
again,  you  may  believe.  They  are  preening 
themselves,  each  man  in  his  place  on  the  slats 
of  the  barge.  They  are  enjoying  their  chew- 
ing tobacco  the  same  as  ever. 

Wheat,  wheat,  wheat,  wheat!  States  and 
continents  and  oceans  and  solar-systems  of 
wheat!  We  poor  ne'er-do-weels  take  our 
little  part  up  there  in  the  header  half  way 
between  the  sky  and  the  earth,  and  in 
the  evening  going  home,  carrying  Mister 
Stacker-Man  in  our  barge,  we  sing  Sweet 
Rosy  O'Grady  and  the  Battle  Hymn  of  the 
Republic.  And  the  most  emphatic  and  un- 
adulterated tramp  among  us  harvesters,  a 


THE    THIRD    HARVEST     151 

giant  Swiss  fifty  years  old,  gives  the  yodel 
he  learned  when  a  boy. 

This  is  a  German  Catholic  family  for 
which  I  have  been  working.  We  have  had 
grace  before  and  after  every  meal,  and  we 
crossed  ourselves  before  and  after  every 
meal,  except  the  Swiss,  who  left  the  table 
early  to  escape  being  blest  too  much. 

My  employers  are  good  folk,  good  as  the 
Mennonites.  My  boss  was  absolutely  on  the 
square  all  the  week,  as  kind  as  a  hard-work- 
ing man  has  time  to  be.  It  gave  me  great 
satisfaction  to  go  to  Mass  with  him  this 
morning.  Though  some  folks  talk  against 
religion,  though  it  sometimes  appears  to  be 
a  nuisance,  after  weighing  all  the  evidence 
of  late  presented,  I  prefer  a  religious 
farmer. 


152  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

HERE'S   TO    THE   SPIRIT   OF   FIRE 

Here's  to  the  spirit  of  fire,  wherever  the  flame  is  un- 
furled, 
In  the  sun,  it  may  be,  as  a  torch,  to  lead  on  and 

enlighten  the  world; 
That  melted  the  glacial  streams,  in  the  day  that  no 

memories  reach, 
That  shimmered  in  amber  and  shell  and  weed  on  the 

earliest  beach; 
The  genius  of  love  and  of  life,  the  power  that  will 

ever  abound, 
That  waits  in  the  bones  of  the  dead,  who  sleep  till 

the  judgment  shall  sound. 
Here's  to  the  spirit  of  fire,  when  clothed  in  swift 

music  it  comes, 
The  glow  of  the  harvesting  songs,  the  voice  of  the 

national  drums; 
The  whimsical,  various  fire,  in  the  rhymes  and  ideas 

of  men, 
Buried  in  books  for  an  age,  exploding  and  writhing 

again, 
And  blown  a  red  wind  round  the  world,  consuming 

the  lies  in  its  mirth, 
Then  locked  in  dark  volumes  for  long,  and  buried  like 

coal  in  the  earth. 
Here's  to  the  comforting  fire  in  the  joys  of  the  blind 

and  the  meek, 


THE    THIRD    HARVEST     153 

In  the  customs  of  letterless  lands,  in  the  thoughts 

of  the  stupid  and  weak. 
In  the  weariest  legends  they  tell,  in  their  cruellest, 

coldest  belief, 
In  the  proverbs  of  counter  or  till,  in  the  arts  of  the 

priest  or  the  thief. 
Here's  to  the  spirit  of  fire,  that  never  the  ocean  can 

drown, 
That  glows  in  the  phosphorent  wave,  and  gleams  in 

the  sea-rosefs  crown; 
That  sleeps  in  the  sunbeam  and  mist,  that  creeps  as 

the  wise  can  but  know, 
A  wonder,  an  incense,  a  whim,  a  perfume,  a  fear  and 

a  glow, 
Ensnaring  the  stars   with  a  spell,  and  holding  the 

earth  in  a  net, 
Yea,  •filling  the  nations  with  prayer,  wherever  man's 

pathway  is  set. 


VI 


The  End  of  the  Road;  Moonshine;  and 
Some  Proclamations 

AUGUST  1,  1912.  Standing  up  at  the 
Postoffice  desk,  Pueblo,  Colorado. 

Several  times  since  going1  over  the  Colo- 
rado border  I  have  had  such  a  cordial  recep- 
tion for  the  Gospel  of  Beauty  that  my  faith 
in  this  method  of  propaganda  is  reawak- 
ened. I  confess  to  feeling  a  new  zeal.  But 
there  are  other  things  I  want  to  tell  in  this 
letter. 

I  have  begged  my  way  from  Dodge  City 
on,  dead  broke,  and  keeping  all  the  rules 
of  the  road.  I  have  been  asked  dozens  of 
times  by  frantic  farmers  to  help  them  at 
various  tasks  in  western  Kansas  and  eastern 
Colorado.  I  have  regretfully  refused  all 

154 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD  155 

but  half-day  jobs,  having  firmly  resolved 
not  to  harvest  again  till  I  have  well  started 
upon  a  certain  spiritual  enterprise,  namely, 
the  writing  of  certain  new  poems  that  have 
taken  possession  of  me  in  this  high  altitude, 
despite  the  physical  stupidity  that  comes 
with  strenuous  walking.  Thereby  hangs  a 
tale  that  I  have  not  room  for  here. 

Resolutely  setting  aside  all  recent  won- 
ders, I  have  still  a  few  impressions  of  the 
wheatfield  to  record.  Harvesting  time  in 
Kansas  is  such  a  distinctive  institution! 
Whole  villages  that  are  dead  any  other  sea- 
son blossom  with  new  rooming  signs,  fifty 
cents  a  room,  or  when  two  beds  are  in  a 
room,  twenty-five  cents  a  bed.  The  eating 
counters  are  generally  separate  from  these. 
The  meals  are  almost  uniformly  twenty-five 
cents  each.  The  fact  that  Kansas  has  no 
bar-rooms  makes  these  shabby  food-sodden 
places  into  near-taverns,  the  main  assembly 
halls  for  men  wanting  to  be  hired,  or  those 
spending  their  coin.  Famous  villages  where 


156  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

an  enormous  amount  of  money  changes 
hands  in  wages  and  the  sale  of  wheat-crops 
are  thus  nothing  but  marvellous  lines  of 
dirty  restaurants.  In  front  of  the  dingy 
hotels  are  endless  ancient  chairs.  Summer 
after  summer  fidgety,  sun-fevered,  sticky 
harvesters  have  gossiped  from  chair  to  chair 
or  walked  toward  the  dirty  band-stand  in 
the  public  square,  sure,  as  of  old,  to  be  en- 
countered by  the  anxious  farmer,  making 
up  his  crew. 

A  few  harvesters  are  seen,  carrying  their 
own  bedding ;  grasshopper  bitten  quilts  with 
all  their  colors  flaunting  and  their  cotton 
gushing  out,  held  together  by  a  shawl-strap 
or  a  rope.  Almost  every  harvester  has  a 
shabby  suit-case  of  the  paste-board  variety 
banging  round  his  ankles.  When  wages  are 
rising  the  harvester,  as  I  have  said  before, 
holds  out  for  the  top  price.  The  poor  farmer 
walks  round  and  round  the  village  half  a 
day  before  he  consents  to  the  three  dollars. 
Stacker's  wages  may  be  three  to  five  simo- 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD  157 

Icons  and  the  obdurate  farmer  may  have 
to  consent  to  the  five  lest  his  wheat  go  to 
seed  on  the  ground.  It  is  a  hard  situation 
for  a  class  that  is  constitutionally  tightwad, 
often  wisely  so. 

The  roundhouses,  water  tanks,  and  all 
other  places  where  men  stealing  freight  rides 
are  apt  to  pass,  have  enticing  cards  tacked 
on  or  near  them  by  the  agents  of  the  mayors 
of  the  various  towns,  giving  average  wages, 
number  of  men  wanted,  and  urging  all  har- 
vesters good  and  true  to  come  to  some  par- 
ticular town  between  certain  dates.  The 
multitude  of  these  little  cards  keeps  the  har- 
vester on  the  alert,  and,  as  the  saying  is: 
"Independent  as  a  hog  on  ice." 

To  add  to  the  farmer's  distractions,  still 
fresher  news  comes  by  word  of  mouth  that 
three  hundred  men  are  wanted  in  a  region 
two  counties  to  the  west,  at  fifty  cents  more 
a  day.  It  sweeps  through  the  harvesters' 
hotels,  and  there  is  a  great  banging  of  suit- 
cases, and  the  whole  town  is  rushing  for  the 


158  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

train.  Then  there  is  indeed  a  nabbing  of 
men  at  the  station,  and  sudden  surrender  on 
the  part  of  the  farmers,  before  it  is  too  late. 

Harvesting  season  is  inevitably  placarded 
and  dated  too  soon  in  one  part  of  the  State, 
and  not  soon  enough  in  another.  Kansas 
weather  does  not  produce  its  results  on 
schedule.  This  makes  not  one,  but  many 
hurry-calls.  It  makes  the  real  epic  of  the 
muscle-market. 

Stand  with  me  at  the  station.  Behold 
the  trains  rushing  by,  hour  after  hour, 
freight-cars  and  palace  cars  of  dishevelled 
men!  The  more  elegant  the  equipage  the 
more  do  they  put  their  feet  on  the  seats. 
Behold  a  saturnalia  of  chewing  tobacco  and 
sunburn  and  hairy  chests,  disturbing  the 
primness  and  crispness  of  the  Santa  Fe, 
jostling  the  tourist  and  his  lovely  daughter. 

They  are  a  happy-go-lucky  set.  They 
have  the  reverse  of  the  tightwad's  vices.  The 
harvester,  alas,  is  harvested.  Gamblers  lie 
in  wait  for  him.  The  scarlet  woman  has  her 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD  159 

pit  digged  and  ready.  It  is  fun  for  the 
police  to  lock  him  up  and  fine  him.  No 
doubt  he  often  deserves  it.  I  sat  half  an 
afternoon  in  one  of  these  towns  and  heard 
the  local  undertaker  tell  horrible  stories  of 
friendless  field  hands  with  no  kinsfolk  any- 
where discoverable,  sunstruck  and  buried  in 
a  day  or  so  by  the  county.  One  man's  story 
he  told  in  great  detail.  The  fellow  had  com- 
plained of  a  headache,  and  left  the  field.  He 
fell  dead  by  the  roadside  on  the  way  to  the 
house.  He  was  face  downward  in  an  ant 
hill.  He  was  eaten  into  an  unrecognizable 
mass  before  they  found  him  at  sunset.  The 
undertaker  expatiated  on  how  hard  it  was 
to  embalm  such  folks.  It  was  a  discourse 
marshalled  with  all  the  wealth  of  detail  one 
reads  in  The  Facts  in  the  Case  of  M.  Val~ 
demar. 

The  harvester  is  indeed  harvested.  He 
gambles  with  sunstroke,  disease  and  damna- 
tion. In  one  way  or  another  the  money 
trickles  from  his  loose  fingers,  and  he  drifts 


160  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

from  the  wheat  in  Oklahoma  north  to  the 
wheat  in  Nebraska.  He  goes  to  Canada  to 
shock  wheat  there  as  the  season  recedes,  and 
then,  perhaps,  turns  on  his  tracks  and  makes 
for  Duluth,  Minnesota,  we  will  say.  He 
takes  up  lumbering.  Or  he  may  make  a 
circuit  of  the  late  fruit  crops  of  Colorado 
and  California.  He  is,  pretty  largely,  so 
much  crude,  loose,  ungoverned  human 
strength,  more  useful  than  wise.  Looked 
at  closely,  he  may  be  the  boy  from  the 
machine-shop,  impatient  for  ready  money, 
the  farmer  failure  turned  farm-hand,  the 
bank-clerk  or  machine-shop  mechanic  tired 
of  slow  pay,  or  the  college  student  on  a 
lark,  in  more  or  less  incognito.  He  may 
be  the  intermittent  criminal,  the  gay-cat  or 
the  travelling  religious  crank,  or  the  futile 
tract-  distributer. 

And  I  was  three  times  fraternally  ac- 
costed by  harvesters  who  thought  my  oil- 
cloth package  of  poems  was  a  kit  of 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   161 

burglar's  tools.    It  is  a  system  of  breaking 
in,  I  will  admit. 


A  STORY  LEFT  OUT  OF  THE 
LETTERS 

This  ends  the  section  of  my  letters  home 
that  in  themselves  make  a  consecutive  story. 
But  to  finish  with  a  bit  of  a  nosegay,  and 
show  one  of  the  unexpected  rewards  of 
troubadouring,  let  me  tell  the  tale  of  the 
Five  Little  Children  Eating  Mush. 

One  should  not  be  so  vain  as  to  recount  a 
personal  triumph.  Still  this  is  a  personal 
triumph.  And  I  shall  tell  it  with  all  pride 
and  vanity.  Let  those  who  dislike  a  con- 
ceited man  drop  the  book  right  here. 

I  had  walked  all  day  straight  west  from 
Rocky  Ford.  It  was  pitch  dark,  threatening 
rain — the  rain  that  never  comes.  It  was 
nearly  ten  o'clock.  At  six  I  had  entered  a 
village,  but  had  later  resolved  to  press  on  to 
visit  a  man  to  whom  I  had  a  letter  of  intro- 


162  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

duction  from  my  loyal  friend  Dr.  Barbour 
of  Rocky  Ford. 

There  had  been  a  wash-out.  I  had  to  walk 
around  it,  and  was  misdirected  by  the  good 
villagers  and  was  walking  merrily  on  toward 
nowhere.  Around  nine  o'clock  I  had  been 
refused  lodging  at  three  different  shanties. 
But  from  long  experience  I  knew  that  some- 
thing would  turn  up  in  a  minute.  And 
it  did. 

I  walked  right  into  the  fat  sides  of  a  big 
country  hotel  on  that  interminable  plain.  It 
was  not  surrounded  by  a  village.  It  was 
simply  a  clean  hostelrie  for  the  transient 
hands  who  worked  at  irrigating  in  that  re- 
gion. 

I  asked  the  looming  figure  I  met  in  the 
dark:  "Where  is  the  boss  of  this  place?" 

"I  am  the  boss."  He  had  a  Scandinavian 
twist  to  his  tongue. 

"I  want  a  night's  lodging.  I  will  give  in 
exchange  an  entertainment  this  evening,  or 
half  a  day's  work  to-morrow." 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   163 

"Come  in." 

I  followed  him  up  the  outside  stairway  to 
the  dining-room  in  the  second  story.  There 
was  his  wife,  a  woman  who  greeted  me 
cheerfully  in  the  Scandinavian  accent.  She 
was  laughing  at  her  five  little  children  who 
were  laughing  at  her  and  eating  their  mush 
and  milk. 

Presumably  the  boarders  had  been  de- 
layed by  their  work,  and  had  dined  late. 
The  children  were  at  it  still  later. 

They  were  real  Americans,  those  little 
birds.  And  they  had  memories  like  parrots, 
as  will  appear. 

"Wife,"  said  the  landlord,  "here  is  a  man 
that  will  entertain  us  to-night  for  his  keep, 
or  work  for  us  to-morrow.  I  think  we  will 
take  the  entertainment  to-night.  Go  ahead, 
mister.  Here  are  the  kids.  Now  listen, 
kids." 

To  come  out  of  the  fathomless,  friendless 
dark  and,  almost  in  an  instant,  to  look  into 
such  expectant  fairy  faces!  They  were 


164  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

laughing,  laughing,  laughing,  not  in  mock- 
ery, but  companionship.  I  recited  every 
child-piece  I  had  ever  written — (not  many) . 

They  kept  quite  still  till  the  end  of  each 
one.  Then  they  pounded  the  table  for  more, 
with  their  tin  spoons  and  their  little  red 
fists. 

So,  with  misgivings,  I  began  to  recite 
some  of  my  fairy-tales  for  grown-ups.  I 
spoke  slowly,  to  make  the  externals  of  each 
story  plain.  The  audience  squealed  for 
more.  ...  I  decided  to  recite  six  jingles 
about  the  moon,  that  I  had  written  long  ago : 
How  the  Hysena  said  the  Moon  was  a 
Golden  Skull,  and  how  the  Shepherd  Dog 
contradicted  him  and  said  it  was  a  Candle 
in  the  Sky — and  all  that  and  all  that. 

The  success  of  the  move  was  remarkable 
because  I  had  never  pleased  either  grown 
folks  or  children  to  any  extent  with  those 
verses.  But  these  children,  through  the  ac- 
cumulated excitements  of  a  day  that  I  knew 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   165 

nothing  about,  were  in  an  ecstatic  imagina- 
tive condition  of  soul  that  transmuted  every- 
thing. 

The  last  of  the  series  recounted  what 
Grandpa  Mouse  said  to  the  Little  Mice  on 
the  Moon  question.  I  arranged  the  ketchup 
bottle  on  the  edge  of  the  table  for  Grandpa 
Mouse.  I  used  the  salts  and  peppers  for  the 
little  mice  in  circle  round.  I  used  a  black 
hat  or  so  for  the  swooping,  mouse-eating 
owls  that  came  down  from  the  moon.  Hav- 
ing acted  out  the  story  first,  I  recited  it, 
slowly,  mind  you.  Here  it  is : 

WHAT    GRANDPA   MOUSE    SAID 

"The   moon's   a  holy   owl-queen: 
She  keeps  them  in  a  jar 
Under  her  arm  till  evening, 
Then   sallies   forth  to  war. 

She  pours  the  owls  upon  us: 
They  hoot  with  horrid  noise 
And  eat  the  naughty  mousie-girls 
And  wicked  mousie-boys. 


166  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

So  climb  the  moon-vine  every  night 
And  to  the  owl-queen  pray: 
Leave  good  green  cheese  by  moonlit  trees 
For  her  to  take  away. 

And  never  squeak,  my  children, 
Nor  gnaw  the  smoke-house  door. 
The  owl-queen  then  will  then  love  us 
And  send  her  birds  no  more." 

At  the  end  I  asked  for  my  room  and  re- 
tired. I  slept  maybe  an  hour.  I  was  awak- 
ened by  those  tireless  little  rascals  racing 
along  the  dark  hall  and  saying  in  horrible 
solemn  tones,  pretending  to  scare  one  an- 
other: 

"The  moon's  a  holy  owl-queen: 
She  keeps  them  in  a  jar 
Under  her  arm  till  night, 
Then  'allies  out  to  war! 
She  sicks  the  owls  upon  us, 
They  'GOT  with  'orrid  noise 
And  eat  .  .  .  the  naughty  boys, 
And  the  MOON'S  A  HOLY  OWL-QUEEN! 
SHE  KEEPS  THEM  IN  A  JAR!" 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   167 

And  so  it  went  on,  over  and  over. 

Thereupon  I  made  a  mighty  and  a  rash 
resolve.  I  renewed  that  same  resolve  in  the 
morning  when  I  woke.  I  said  within  myself 
ffl  shall  write  one  hundred  Poems  on  the 
Moon!" 

Of  course  I  did  not  keep  my  resolve  to 
write  one  hundred  pieces  about  the  moon. 
But  here  are  a  few  of  those  I  did  write  im- 
mediately after: 

THE    FLUTE   OF   THE   LONELY 

[To  the  tune  of  Gaily  the   Troubadour.] 

Faintly  the  ne'er-do-well 

Breathed  through  his  flute: 

All  the  tired  neighbor-folk, 

Hearing,  were  mute. 

In  their  neat  doorways  sat, 

Labors  all  done, 

Helpless,  relaxed,  o'er-wrought, 

Evening  begun. 

None  of  them  there  beguiled 
Work-thoughts  away, 


168   THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Like  to  this  reckless,  wild 

Loafer  by  day. 

(Weeds  in  his  flowers  upgrown! 

Fences  awry! 

Rubbish  and  bottles  heaped! 

Yard  like  a  sty!) 

There  in  his  lonely  door, 
Leering  and  lean, 
Staggering,  liquor-stained, 

Outlawed,  obscene 

Played  he  his  moonlight  thought, 

Mastered  his  flute. 

All  the  tired  neighbor-folk, 

Hearing,   were   mute. 

None  but  he,  in  that  block, 

Knew  such  a  tune. 

All  loved  the  strain,  and  all 

Looked  at  the  moon! 


THE    SHIELD    OF    FAITH 

The  full  moon  is  the  Shield  of  Faith, 
And  when  it  hangs  on  high 

Another  shield  seems  on  my  arm 
The  hard  world  to  defy. 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   169 

Yea,  when  the  moon  has  knighted  me, 

Then  every  poisoned  dart 
Of  daytime  memory  turns  away 

From  my  dream-armored  heart. 

The  full  moon  is  the  Shield  of  Faith: 

As  long  as  it  shall  rise, 
I  know  that  Mystery  comes  again, 

That  Wonder  never  dies. 

I  know  that  Shadow  has  its  place, 

That  Noon  is  not  our  goal, 
That  Heaven  has  non-official  hours 

To  soothe  and  mend  the  soul; 

That  witchcraft  can  be  angel-craft 

And  wizard  deeds  sublime; 
That  utmost  darkness  bears  a  flower, 

Though  long  the  budding-time. 


THE  ROSE  OF  MIDNIGHT 

[What  the  Gardener's   Daughter   Said] 

The  moon  is  now  an  opening  flower, 

The  sky  a  cliff  of  blue. 
The  moon  is  now  a  silver  rose; 

Her  pollen  is  the  dew. 


170  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

Her  pollen  is  the  mist  that  swings 

Across  her  face  of  dreams: 
Her  pollen  is  the  faint  cold  light 

That  through  the  garden  streams. 

All  earth  is  but  a  passion-flower 

With  blood  upon  his  crown. 
And  what  shall  fill  his  failing  veins 

And   lift   his    head,   bowed    down? 

This  cup  of  peace,  this  silver  rose 

Bending  with  fairy  breath 
Shall   lift  that  passion-flower,    the    earth, 

A  million  times  from  Death! 


THE  PATH  IN  THE  SKY 

I  sailed  a  little  shallop 
Upon  a  pretty  sea 
In  blue  and  hazy  mountains, 
Scarce  mountains  unto  me; 
Their  summits  lost  in  wonder, 
They  wrapped  the  lake  around, 
And  when  my  shallop  landed 
I  trod  on  a  vague  ground, 

And  climbed  and  climbed  toward  heaven, 
Though  scarce  before  my  feet 
I  found  one  step  unveiled  there 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD  171 

The  blue-haze  vast,  complete, 

Until  I  came  to  Zion 

The  gravel  paths  of  God: 

My  endless  trail  pierced  the  thick  veil 

To  flaming  flowers  and  sod. 

I  rested,  looked  behind  me 

And  saw  where  I  had  been. 

My  little  lake.     It  was  the  moon. 

Sky-mountains  closed  it  in. 


PROCLAMATIONS 

Immediately  upon  my  return  from  my 
journey  the  following  Proclamations  were 
printed  in  Farm  and  Fireside,  through  the 
great  kindness  of  the  editors,  as  another 
phase  of  the  same  crusade. 

A  PROCLAMATION 
OF  BALM  IN  GILEAD 

to  the  fields,  O  city  laborers,  till  your 
wounds  are  healed.  Forget  the  street- 
cars, the  skyscrapers,  the  slums,  the  Marseil- 
laise song. 


172   THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

We  proclaim  to  the  broken-hearted,  still 
able  to  labor,  the  glories  of  the  ploughed 
land.  The  harvests  are  wonderful.  And 
there  is  a  spiritual  harvest  appearing.  A 
great  agricultural  flowering  of  art  and  song 
is  destined  soon  to  appear.  Where  corn  and 
wheat  are  growing,  men  are  singing  the 
psalms  of  David,  not  the  Marseillaise. 

You  to  whom  the  universe  has  become  a 
blast-furnace,  a  coke-oven,  a  cinder-strewn 
freight-yard,  to  whom  the  history  of  all  ages 
is  a  tragedy  with  the  climax  now,  to  whom 
our  democracy  and  our  flag  are  but  play- 
things of  the  hypocrite, — turn  to  the  soil, 
turn  to  the  earth,  your  mother,  and  she  will 
comfort  you.  Rest,  be  it  ever  so  little,  from 
your  black  broodings.  Think  with  the 
farmer  once  more,  as  your  fathers  did. 
Revere  with  the  farmer  our  centuries-old 
civilization,  however  little  it  meets  the  city's 
trouble.  Revere  the  rural  customs  that  have 
their  roots  in  the  immemorial  benefits  of 
nature. 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   173 

With  the  farmer  look  again  upon  the 
Constitution  as  something  brought  by 
Providence,  prepared  for  by  the  ages.  Go 
to  church,  the  cross-roads  church,  and  say 
the  Lord's  Prayer  again.  Help  them  with 
their  temperance  crusade.  It  is  a  deeper 
matter  than  you  think.  Listen  to  the  laugh- 
ter of  the  farmer's  children.  Know  that 
not  all  the  earth  is  a-weeping.  Know  that  so 
long  as  there  is  black  soil  deep  on  the  prairie, 
so  long  as  grass  will  grow  on  it,  we  have  a 
vast  green  haven. 

The  roots  of  some  of  our  trees  are  still  in 
the  earth.  Our  mountains  need  not  to  be 
moved  from  their  places.  Wherever  there  is 
tillable  land,  there  is  a  budding  and  bloom- 
ing of  old-fashioned  Americanism,  which  the 
farmer  is  making  splendid  for  us  against 
the  better  day. 

There  is  perpetual  balm  in  Gilead,  and 
many  city  workmen  shall  turn  to  it  and  be 
healed.  This  by  faith,  and  a  study  of  the 
signs,  we  proclaim! 


174  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

PROCLAMATION 

Of  the  New  Time  for  Farmers  and  the  New 
New  England 


T  ET  it  be  proclaimed  and  shouted  over  all 
the  ploughlands  of  the  United  States 
that  the  same  ripening  that  brought  our  first 
culture  in  New  England  one  hundred  years 
ago  is  taking  place  in  America  to-day. 
Every  State  is  to  have  its  Emerson,  its 
Whittier,  its  Longfellow,  its  Hawthorne 
and  the  rest. 

Our  Puritan  farmer  fathers  in  our 
worthiest  handful  of  States  waited  long  for 
their  first  group  of  burnished,  burning 
lamps.  From  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims 
in  1620  to  the  delivery  of  Emerson's  ad- 
dress on  the  American  Scholar  was  a  weary 
period  of  gestation  well  rewarded. 

Therefore,  let  us  be  thankful  that  we  have 
come  so  soon  to  the  edge  of  this  occasion, 
that  the  western  farms,  though  scarcely  set- 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   175 

tied,  have  the  Chautauqua,  which  is  New 
England's  old  rural  lecture  course ;  the  tem- 
perance crusade,  which  is  New  England's 
abolitionism  come  again;  the  magazine  mili- 
tant, which  is  the  old  Atlantic  Monthly  com- 
bined with  the  Free- Soil  Newspaper  under 
a  new  dress,  and  educational  reform,  which 
is  the  Yankee  school-house  made  glorious. 

All  these,  and  more,  electrify  the  farm- 
lands. Things  are  in  that  ferment  where 
many-sided  Life  and  Thought  are  born. 

Because  our  West  and  South  are  richer 
and  broader  and  deeper  than  New  England, 
so  much  more  worth  while  will  our  work  be. 
We  will  come  nearer  to  repeating  the  spirit 
of  the  best  splendors  of  the  old  Italian  vil- 
lages than  to  multiplying  the  prunes  and 
prisms  of  Boston. 

The  mystery-seeking,  beauty-serving  fol- 
lowers of  Poe  in  their  very  revolt  from 
democracy  will  serve  it  well.  The  Pan- wor- 
shipping disciples  of  Whitman  will  in  the 
end  be,  perhaps,  more  useful  brothers  of  the 


176  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

White  Christ  than  all  our  coming  saints. 
And  men  will  not  be  infatuated  by  the  writ- 
ten and  spoken  word  only,  as  in  New  Eng- 
land. Every  art  shall  have  the  finest  devo- 
tion. 

Already  in  this  more  tropical  California, 
this  airier  Colorado,  this  black-soiled  Illinois, 
in  Georgia,  with  her  fire-hearted  tradition 
of  chivalry  and  her  new  and  most  romantic 
prosperity,  men  have  learned  to  pray  to  the 
God  of  the  blossoming  world,  men  have 
learned  to  pray  to  the  God  of  Beauty.  They 
meditate  upon  His  ways.  They  have  begun 
to  sing. 

As  of  old,  their  thoughts  and  songs  begin 
with  the  land,  and  go  directly  back  to  the 
land.  Their  tap-roots  are  deep  as  those 
of  the  alfalfa.  A  new  New  England  is 
coming,  a  New  England  of  ninety  million 
souls!  An  artistic  Renaissance  is  coming. 
An  America  is  coming  such  as  was  long  ago 
prophesied  in  Emerson's  address  on  the 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD  177 

American  Scholar.     This  by  faith,  and  a 
study  of  the  signs,  we  proclaim! 

PROCLAMATION 

Of  the  New  Village,  and  the  New  Country 
Community,  as  Distinct  from  the  Tillage 


is  a  year  of  bumper  crops,  of  har- 
vesting festivals.  Through  the  mists 
of  the  happy  waning  year,  a  new  village 
rises,  and  the  new  country  community,  in 
visions  revealed  to  the  rejoicing  heart  of 
faith. 

And  yet  it  needs  no  vision  to  see  them. 
Walking  across  this  land  I  have  found 
them,  little  ganglions  of  life,  promise  of 
thousands  more.  The  next  generation  will 
be  that  of  the  eminent  village.  The  son  of 
the  farmer  will  be  no  longer  dazzled  and  de- 
stroyed by  the  fires  of  the  metropolis.  He 
will  travel,  but  only  for  what  he  can  bring 
back.  Just  as  his  father  sends  half-way 


178  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

across  the  continent  for  good  corn,  or  melon- 
seed,  so  he  will  make  his  village  famous  by 
transplanting  and  growing  this  idea  or  that. 
He  will  make  it  known  for  its  pottery  or 
its  processions,  its  philosophy  or  its  pea- 
cocks, its  music  or  its  swans,  its  golden  roofs 
or  its  great  union  cathedral  of  all  faiths. 
There  are  a  thousand  miscellaneous  achieve- 
ments within  the  scope  of  the  great-hearted 
village.  Our  agricultural  land  to-day  holds 
the  ploughboys  who  will  bring  these  benefits. 
I  have  talked  to  these  boys.  I  know  them. 
I  have  seen  their  gleaming  eyes. 

And  the  lonely  country  neighborhood,  as 
distinct  from  the  village,  shall  make  itself 
famous.  There  are  river  valleys  that  will 
be  known  all  over  the  land  for  their  tall  men 
and  their  milk-white  maidens,  as  now  for 
their  well-bred  horses.  There  are  mountain 
lands  that  shall  cultivate  the  tree  of  knowl- 
edge, as  well  as  the  apple-tree.  There  are 
sandy  tracts  that  shall  constantly  ripen  red 
and  golden  citrus  fruit,  but  as  well,  philoso- 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD  179 

phers  comforting  as  the  moon,  and  strength- 
giving  as  the  sun. 

These  communities  shall  have  their  proud 
circles.  They  shall  have  families  joined 
hand  in  hand,  to  the  end  that  new  blood  and 
new  thoughts  be  constantly  brought  in,  and 
no  good  force  or  leaven  be  lost.  The  coun- 
try community  shall  awaken  illustrious. 
This  by  faith,  and  a  study  of  the  signs,  we 
proclaim! 


PROCLAMATION 

Welcoming  the  Talented  Children  of  the 
Soil 

"DECAUSE    of   their    closeness    to    the 
earth,  the  men  on  the  farms  increase 
in  stature  and  strength. 

And  for  this  very  reason  a  certain  pro- 
portion of  their  children  are  being  born  with 
a  finer  strength.  They  are  being  born  with 
all  this  power  concentrated  in  their  nerves. 


180  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

They  have  the  magnificent  thoughts  that 
might  stir  the  stars  in  their  courses,  were 
they  given  voice. 

Yea,  in  almost  every  ranch-house  is  born 
one  flower-like  girl  or  boy,  a  stranger  among 
the  brothers  and  sisters.  Welcome,  and  a 
thousand  welcomes,  to  these  fairy  change- 
lings !  They  will  make  our  land  lovely.  Let 
all  of  us  who  love  God  give  our  hearts  to 
these  His  servants.  They  are  born  with  eyes 
that  weep  themselves  blind,  unless  there  is 
beauty  to  look  upon.  They  are  endowed 
with  souls  that  are  self -devouring,  unless 
they  be  permitted  to  make  rare  music;  with 
a  desire  for  truth  that  will  make  them  mad 
as  the  old  prophets,  unless  they  be  permitted 
to  preach  and  pray  and  praise  God  in  their 
own  fashion,  each  establishing  his  own  dream 
visibly  in  the  world. 

The  land  is  being  jewelled  with  talented 
children,  from  Maine  to  California:  souls 
dewy  as  the  grass,  eyes  wondering  and  pas- 
sionate, lips  that  tremble.  Though  they  be 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   181 

born  in  hovels,  they  have  slender  hands, 
seemingly  lost  amid  the  heavy  hands.  They 
have  hands  that  give  way  too  soon  amid  the 
bitter  days  of  labor,  but  are  everlastingly 
patient  with  the  violin,  or  chisel,  or  brush, 
or  pen. 

All  these  children  as  a  sacred  charge  are 
appearing,  coming  down  upon  the  earth  like 
manna.  Yet  many  will  be  neglected  as  the 
too-abundant  mulberry,  that  is  left  upon  the 
trees.  Many  will  perish  like  the  wild  straw- 
berries of  Kansas,  cut  down  by  the  roadside 
with  the  weeds.  Many  will  be  looked  upon 
like  an  over-abundant  crop  of  apples,  too 
cheap  to  be  hauled  to  market,  often  used  as 
food  for  the  beasts.  There  will  be  a  great 
slaughter  of  the  innocents,  more  bloody  than 
that  of  Herod  of  old.  But  there  will  be  a 
desperate  hardy  remnant,  adepts  in  all  the 
conquering  necromancy  of  agricultural 
Song  and  democratic  Craftsmanship.  They 
will  bring  us  our  new  time  in  its  complete- 
ness. 


182  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

This  by  faith,  and  a  study  of  the  signs, 
we  proclaim! 

PROCLAMATION 

Of  the  Coming  of  Religion,  Equality  and 
Beauty 

TN  OUR  new  day,  so  soon  upon  us,  for  the 
first  time  in  the  history  of  Democracy, 
art  and  the  church  shall  be  hand  in  hand  and 
equally  at  our  service.  Neither  craftsman- 
ship nor  prayer  shall  be  purely  aristocratic 
any  more,  nor  at  war  with  each  other,  nor 
at  war  with  the  State.  The  priest,  the  states- 
man and  the  singer  shall  discern  one 
another's  work  more  perfectly  and  give 
thanks  to  God. 

Even  now  our  best  churches  are  blossom- 
ing in  beauty.  Our  best  political  life,  what- 
ever the  howlers  may  say,  is  tending  toward 
equality,  beauty  and  holiness. 

Political  speech  will  cease  to  turn  only 
upon  the  price  of  grain,  but  begin  consider- 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   183 

ing  the  price  of  cross-roads  fountains  and 
people's  palaces.  Our  religious  life  will  no 
longer  trouble  itself  with  the  squabbles  of 
orthodoxy.  It  will  give  us  the  outdoor  choral 
procession,  the  ceremony  of  dedicating  the 
wheat-field  or  the  new-built  private  house  to 
God.  That  politician  who  would  benefit  the 
people  will  not  consider  all  the  world 
wrapped  up  in  the  defence  or  destruction  of 
a  tariff  schedule.  He  will  serve  the  public 
as  did  Pericles,  with  the  world's  greatest 
dramas.  He  will  rebuild  the  local  Acropolis. 
He  will  make  his  particular  Athens  rule  by 
wisdom  and  philosophy,  not  trade  alone. 
Our  crowds  shall  be  audiences,  not  hurrying 
mobs;  dancers,  not  brawlers;  observers,  not 
restless  curiosity-seekers.  Our  mobs  shall 
becomes  assemblies  and  our  assemblies  relig- 
ious ;  devout  in  a  subtle  sense,  equal  in  privi- 
lege and  courtesy,  delicate  of  spirit,  a 
perfectly  rounded  democracy. 

All  this  shall  come  through  the  services  of 
three  kinds  of  men  in  wise  cooperation:  the 


184  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

priests,  the  statesmen  and  the  artists.  Our 
priests  shall  be  religious  men  like  St.  Francis, 
or  John  Wesley,  or  General  Booth,  or  Car- 
dinal Newman.  They  shall  be  many  types, 
but  supreme  of  their  type. 

Our  statesmen  shall  find  their  exemplars 
and  their  inspiration  in  Washington,  Jeffer- 
son and  Lincoln,  as  all  good  Americans 
devoutly  desire. 

But  even  these  cannot  ripen  the  land  with- 
out the  work  of  men  as  versatile  as  William 
Morris  or  Leonardo.  Our  artists  shall  fuse 
the  work  of  these  other  workers,  and  give 
expression  to  the  whole  cry  and  the  whole 
weeping  and  rejoicing  of  the  land.  We 
shall  have  Shelleys  with  a  heart  for  religion, 
Ruskins  with  a  comprehension  of  equality. 

Religion,  equality  and  beauty!  By  these 
America  shall  come  into  a  glory  that  shall 
justify  the  yearning  of  the  sages  for  her 
perfection,  and  the  prophecies  of  the  poets, 
when  she  was  born  in  the  throes  of  Valley 
Forge. 


THE  END  OF  THE  ROAD   185 

This,  by  faith,  and  a  study  of  the  signs, 
we  proclaim! 

EPILOGUE 

[Written  to  all  young  lovers  about  to  set  up  homes 
of  their  own — but  especially  to  those  of  some 
far-distant  day,  and  those  of  my  home-village] 

Lovers,  0  lovers,  listen  to  my  call. 

Give  me  kind  thoughts.    I  woo  you  on  my  knees. 
Lovers,  pale  lovers,  when  the   wheat  grows  tall. 

When  willow  trees  are  Eden's  incense  trees: — 

/  would  be  welcome  as  the  rose  in  flower 
Or  busy  bird  in  your  most  secret  fane. 

I  would  be  read  in  your  transcendent  hour 

When  book  and  rhyme  seem  for  the  most  part  vain. 

I  would  be  read,  the  while  you  kiss  and  pray. 

I  would  be  read,  ere  the  betrothal  ring 
Circles  the  slender  finger  and  you  say 

Words  out  of  Heaven,  while  your  pulses  sing. 

0  lovers,  be  my  partisans  and  build 

Each  home  with  a  great  fire-place  as  is  meet. 

When  there  you  stand,  with  royal  wonder  filledf 
In  bridal  peace,  and  comradeship  complete, 


186  THE  GOSPEL  OF  BEAUTY 

While  each  dear  heart  beats  like  a  fairy  drum — 
Then  burn  a  new-ripe  wheat-sheaf  in  my  name. 

Out  of  the  fire  my  spirit-bread  shall  come 

And  my  soul's  gospel  swirl  from  that  red  flame. 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


F£B  26  '82 

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MAY  1-5 


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3 2106  00212  3716 


